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CABBAGE,
BREAD, AND DOUGH

by Marc Maurer

The power of a nation may be measured by its capacity for
moral suasion, by its intellectual accomplishments, by the
cultural artifacts which result from the efforts of its people,
by its military might, or by the magnificence of its
architecture. Most of these tests are a measure of what the
country has already done--not what it will do. There is, however,
a less well-known and more pervasive standard for indicating the
position or power of a nation. This is the willingness of others
to accept its money. Historically within a region of the world
the currency of one nation predominates. The Roman denarius
traveled with the Roman army during the conquest of Europe and
the Middle East. The influence of this Roman coin was so great
that it remained a standard unit of money in parts of Europe from
the time of the Roman Empire until the French Revolution in the
late 18th Century.

In the latter half of the 15th century and during much of
the 16th Spain built and maintained the most powerful naval force
in the western world. Spanish explorers sent treasure ships to
the mother country from Central and South America. Because of the
large amount of gold and silver that came into the European
economic system, there was a period of major inflation. However,
the predominance of Spain in the world was felt in the economies
of European countries. The business of the Continent was
conducted largely with Spanish money.

In 1588 an English fleet defeated the Spanish armada. At
about the same time English explorers circumnavigated the globe.
By the 19th century there were English colonies in every part of
the world. It was said that the sun never set on the British
flag. The monetary system of the world also changed. The British
pound sterling became the international currency. London became
the banking center (and, to some extent, the power center) of the
world.

In the first half of the 20th century the
most readily
accepted international currency changed again. President Theodore
Roosevelt called a summit conference to discuss monetary
standards and to stabilize world trade. The dollar became the
predominant unit of international exchange. Whenever the money of
a country was to be valued, the standard of measure was the U.S.
dollar. At the same time the military power of the United States
was regarded as second to none, and the intangible commodity
called "yankee ingenuity" was envied and admired.

If a nation is to be a predominant world power, its money
will have preeminence in world trade. Whether it is that the
nation makes the money important or that the money makes the
nation important is immaterial. It is true that no important
monetary system has ever been established except in connection
with a powerful nation. It is not that preeminence in economic
affairs is necessarily a precondition to a country's becoming a
world power. However, a nation which holds preeminence in its
currency will inevitably be among the most powerful in the world.

Until recently there were those who wondered whether the
Soviet Union would conquer the world. It now appears that this
will not be the case. However, if there should be a threat from
the Soviets in the future, it is unlikely to be determinative
unless a major portion of world trade begins to be transacted in
rubles.

One of the significant currencies in the world today is the
Japanese yen. During much of this century Japan has been a major
participant in world affairs. In the early 1900s the naval power
of Japan defeated Russia. During the past twenty-five years the
Japanese have increasingly captured important segments of the
American and European markets. It is worth wondering whether the
military power of Japan failed to achieve victory in World War II
because the Japanese had not achieved sufficient economic
strength at that time. Perhaps more attention to monetary matters
would have won more battles for Japan.

Such speculation is given heightened plausibility when we
remember that one of the weapons used in war is usually
counterfeit money. The theory is that if a sizable amount of
well-made counterfeit money is distributed in the enemy country,
it will cause disruption of the economic system because of fear
of accepting that country's currency.

We in the National Federation of the Blind devote a great
deal of time and effort to fund raising. This is among our most
significant activities--not only because of the money we generate
(though that is of tremendous importance), but also because fund
raising requires us as blind people to adopt roles essential for
success. The transformation of a segment of society from one
class to another demands that many members of that class
undertake tasks which they have not traditionally performed. To
do fund raising we as blind people must organize our time, offer
a service to others, consider the problems of administration,
solve the difficulties of transportation, recognize the need to
establish systems of accounting and security, and cope with all
of the other details incident to the operation of a complex
structure of daily performance and coordinated effort. Whether
they say it or not (and, for that matter, whether they even know
it consciously), most people begin with the underlying notion
that this level of sophisticated activity is too much for the
blind--and unfortunately many of us who are blind (at least
subconsciously and by our behavior) agree. We of the National
Federation of the Blind reject this idea, not only in specifics
but also as a general principle of philosophy and commitment.
Make no mistake. The money we get through fund raising is
important, but even more valuable may be the establishment and
continuation of the patterns of daily conduct made necessary by
the demands of funding our movement--the patterns of self-
respecting, responsible, first-class human beings.

The moral of the story is clear: Build a program, raise
money, believe in ourselves and our cause, and behave like the
successful people we are and are increasingly becoming. Let us do
these things, and we will inevitably be preeminent in matters
concerning the blind. This message is not aimed just at state and
chapter leaders. It is meant for all of us, from the newest
member to the national president. Find a way to recruit
Associates; join the PAC Plan; raise money to buy DIG policies,
for yourself and as a chapter project; sell candy or cookies (the
task is not too humble); seek donations from corporations and
individuals; and find imaginative ways to attract contributions.
These activities will be helpful to the organization because they
will broaden our economic base--but they will be at least as
important to you and me (and also to the organization as a whole)
because in the process of building, we will move ever closer to
our final goal of first-class status and full membership in
society. Day by day the average Federationist is becoming
increasingly more self-assured, confident, knowledgeable, and
successful.

CHANGING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BLIND:
THE 1991 SEMINAR FOR PARENTS OF BLIND CHILDREN

by Barbara Pierce

The telephone rang at about seven one evening last June. I
was alone at the National Center for the Blind in Baltimore,
preparing my dinner and anxious to return to my computer. I
answered the call--one is never sure what such evening
conversations will cover--and found that I was talking with a
young father from Louisiana. His infant had just been diagnosed
as blind, and he was looking for help. Someone had mentioned that
a big convention of blind people would take place soon in New
Orleans and that there might be some information there that would
help him and his family. He had made a number of phone calls
trying to learn the name of the organization and the time and
place of the convention. None of the professionals in the
blindness field with whom he spoke seemed to know anything about
the event, a fact which puzzled and frustrated him. Finally
someone at the Chamber of Commerce told him that the organization
was the National Federation of the Blind and gave him the phone
number for the National Center.

I told this father about the upcoming convention and the
seminar for parents of blind children that was scheduled for
Sunday, June 30, and assured him that if he and his wife attended
it, they would meet a number of people who could help him get
started the right way with his baby. I also talked with him about
the importance of changing his own notions and expectations about
blindness and what blind people can do. He did attend the
seminar, and though I did not meet him, I have learned that he
talked with other parents of blind children. I don't know what
impact the event had on him, but I do know that this was one of
the most exciting and constructive parent seminars we have ever
conducted.

From their various perspectives, a number
of speakers
addressed the subject of "Changing What it Means to Be Blind." The
morning began with a look at the parent's responsibility to mold the blind child's
attitudes and experience in order to
nurture the development of competent, resilient blind adults.
Then other speakers looked at their own experience and the ways
in which the National Federation of the Blind has assisted them
to succeed in their own lives and work. What follows is a
selection of the presentations at the morning session of the 1991
Parents of Blind Children (POBC) Division seminar. There is no
way to convey the information and excitement communicated in the
afternoon small group sessions. One had to be there to appreciate
the scope and usefulness of the entire seminar and the warmth and
support of the members of the Parents Division. After welcoming
remarks by President Maurer, the morning session of the seminar
opened with the introduction of the keynote speaker by Barbara
Cheadle, president of the Parents of Blind Children Division.
Here are several of the morning agenda items, beginning with the
keynote address:

The Parent's Role
in Changing What It Means to be Blind

by Barbara Pierce

With Barbara's unerring wisdom, she has called me forward to
be an expert. My last child just graduated from high school,
which means that, for better or worse, I've done what I can as a
parent--except for paying the college bills and worrying. I'm in
effect finished with what I can do to shape my children, which in
turn means that I will necessarily begin to forget all the tough
times. This makes me an expert, but I hope you will take what I
have to say seriously, despite my now lofty status.

One
of the most important jobs that parents have to do is to set standards and
to communicate those standards to their
children. We do that all the time. Probably the most frequently
used and least effective method we employ as parents is precept. "Tuck in your shirt." "Keep your mouth closed when you chew."
"Have you written that thank you note?": those kinds of things.
Far more pervasively and more effectively, we establish standards
in our children's lives by example and by expectation. This is
certainly true in every area of life, but it is nowhere more
evident than in teaching blindness-connected skills and
attitudes. For after all, your blind children, whether they be
your students or your own youngsters, are surrounded by some
pretty lousy attitudes and some pretty low standards.

Your job is to wave the flag and to make sure that the
expectations and the standards they adopt as their own are high.
What your attitudes are will, in significant measure, determine
what your children think about blindness and think about
themselves as blind people. So you've got to be careful and
watchful and mindful at all times about what it is that you are
doing and saying and demonstrating and communicating to your
child.

You should keep a close eye on what sighted children of your
youngster's own age and ability level are doing. Are they
choosing their own clothing in the morning? Then your child ought
to be learning that stripes and plaids--whatever those are--don't
go together, that red and orange are not a happy combination,
that Bermuda shorts are not the appropriate thing to wear to
church on Sunday morning. Blind children need to learn those
things, and they don't learn them by having the clothing plunked
down on the bottom of their beds every morning for them with the
instruction to climb into them.

Do you expect your
other children to do chores around the house? Then don't give the blind child
the easy ones. The way to
make siblings dislike a blind child is always to give him or her
the easy things to do or always to let the blind kid off. "But
it's hard." "I didn't get the window clean because I can't see
it."

"Go back and do it again, kid." As
a parent or a teacher,
you've got to keep your standards high.

I remember
being twelve. My mother didn't know other blind children. It was I who discovered
that my friends all washed
their own hair. At that time we set our hair and slept on
curlers. Remember? They were all doing that for themselves. I
wasn't, and I brought this to my mother's attention. I hope that,
as alert parents, you would be the ones to notice this and bring
it to your child's attention. She simply didn't have any way of
recognizing that gap, but she had the wit and the good sense to
say, "Here's the shampoo. I think it'll be easier for you the
first time to go wash it in the basement than in the bathtub.
Shout when you think it's clean, and I'll check you." That was
the last time she had anything to do with washing my hair. You've
got to be alert to that sort of situation.

I'm going to give you some notions about principles that you
can apply in helping yourself to establish good, healthy
standards and expectations for your youngsters. The first, I
would say, is to make sure you understand and live out the
distinction between explanations about blindness and using
blindness as an excuse. For example, when a sighted person walks
down the street and bumps into parked tricycles, garbage cans, an
individual looking at store window displays, or parking meters,
one assumes--with some reason--that the person has probably had
two or three too many to drink. When a blind person using a white
cane brings the cane tip in contact with objects immediately in
his or her path, that is an appropriate use of the white cane. He
does not need to feel apologetic about it. This does not mean, by
the way, that a blind person shouldn't apologize if she taps the
cane on somebody's ankle. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't
attempt to alter the technique of a child who uses a cane like a
scythe, trying to cut people off at the ankles, or like a lance,
attempting to impale people. You certainly need to discourage
that kind of cane use. It is appropriate to use a cane and to
move it in an arc adapted to the density of the crowd in front of
a child or an adult, for that matter. That is a reasonable
explanation of the cane technique used by blind people.

When
a blind or low vision person drops something and doesn't see where it lands,
it is appropriate for that person, in
an orderly, efficient way, to search the area--to listen for
where the thing fell and then to quarter the area, seeking it
tactilely. It is no more inappropriate to search with the hands
in an orderly fashion for something than it is to glance around
and survey an area to see where the thing landed and pick it up.
You do not benefit the child by always handing back things that
have been dropped. A kid will not be discouraged from dropping a
stylus on the floor constantly if you always retrieve it. It
doesn't help anyone for you to think of such an activity or to
describe it to the child as "groping around" for something. It
certainly does not help for you to say to a child with limited
vision, "If you just stand there and look for it, you'd do
better." If the child has seen where it fell and can go and pick
it up, that's fine. Otherwise, the most effective way is usually
to hunt for it tactilely.

That is very different
from allowing a child, yourself, or anybody else to use blindness as an excuse.
It is simply not
appropriate to say, "The child is blind and doesn't know where
the speaker is standing and therefore shouldn't be expected to
face him or her." In this society it is courteous to look at the
person speaking. It is appropriate for you to give information to
the child who hasn't figured out where the speaker is. Quietly
say, "Turn around and look behind you," or "I'm over here. Look
at me when we're talking." These are important pieces of
information for a child who hasn't figured out where the speaker
is.

I was at an end-of-the-year school banquet this
spring, and
the principal spoke from one side of the room without a
microphone to start parents through the dinner line. I thought,
aha, that's where the head table is. When the program began and
the amplified voices were sounding a little bit further off to my
right from there, I thought, oh well, he wasn't at the
microphone. He's now moved to the podium. It's there at the head
table. I therefore looked in the direction from which I heard the
voices. It was halfway through the dinner when my husband said, "The speaker is on the other side of you." In
reality, the podium
was very close to me and on the opposite side from the direction
I had been facing. A public address system speaker was at the
back of the room, and that is what I was hearing. The school had
bought a new P.A. system, and I had made assumptions. I was
annoyed with my husband because he hadn't given me the
information earlier, and I was furious with myself for not
checking on where the speaker was. My performance was simply not
acceptable.

Worry when your kid comes home in the
fifth grade and says, "Teacher says I don't have to take spelling tests.
If I work with the V.I. teacher on the spelling, it'll be okay. Since when
was
it okay for your child to have fewer grades in spelling than
everybody else? The message given is that spelling is not
important for a blind child. Object.

Worry when your high school sophomore dreads for an entire
semester the assignment of the research paper, and then comes
home higher than a kite because she's just been told by her
English teacher that he realizes research would be extremely hard
for her, and therefore if she will do a little bit of research
and then sit down and tell him about it on a cassette tape, that
will be sufficient. That child has just lost seventy-five percent
of the value of a research paper. As an old English teacher and
as the wife of an English professor, I can tell you that the
discipline of organizing your thinking, shaping it into
paragraphs, finding the right words, spelling them accurately,
punctuating them correctly, and then figuring out a way of
getting them legibly presented for consideration by the teacher
is a significant measure of the discipline. Since when did your
child not need that kind of practice in order to succeed in life?

Be
careful when you see your child trying to use blindness as an excuse for
getting out of punishment. Now it's confession
time. I hadn't thought about this story in years. I was in the
seventh grade when somebody in my home room sent a spitball
toward the homeroom teacher, and he didn't know who the offender
was. The guy didn't stand up and confess. Nobody would rat on
him, so the teacher said, "All right, you all stay in for
detention until somebody tells me who did this." Whenever I
missed my school bus I had to take the streetcar unless I worked
it out with my mother that she'd pick me up from school. I wasn't
certain of the route home on that streetcar. I was nervous about
it. I didn't want to have to stay after school for detention. It
wasn't convenient or helpful to me.

I walked up
to that man and said, "I don't think that I was
guilty of doing whatever it was, but would you tell me what a
spitball is?" The man should have known that any twelve-year-old
knows what a spitball is, even if she's not certain about how to
propel it through the air at the speed with which that one had
come at him.

He should have said to me, "You'll stay a week longer than
everybody else does," but he didn't. His eyes misted over, and he
told me that I certainly didn't have to stay. I am ashamed to
admit this to you.

I also recognize that if your
kid has any sense you will be the last to hear such stories, but you have
my permission to use
this story in a sort of prophylactic way. "You try something like
that, kiddo, and we'll have home detention." That is not
appropriate behavior for anybody, and what does it do to a
child's image in the classroom? It is horrible to contemplate! It
took me years, I'm sure, to recover in the eyes of my classmates
from that particular episode.

Well, I've given you the easy examples for distinguishing
between right and wrong behavior. Unfortunately, when the
problems really arise, they tend to come in shades of gray, not
black and white, and they tend to come at about ten o'clock at
night when everybody's exhausted. What do you do when your
youngster announces at 9:30 that there are twenty-four math
problems to be done by tomorrow and then brightly points out that
the math teacher has said that it would be all right for him to
do every other problem?

If that child cannot manage
to stay up to do all twenty-four problems, it will be more salutary to take
the lowered grade on
the homework assignment for having done the first twelve than to
get full marks for having done the even-numbered problems. What
you really have to teach that child is that maybe he ought to
start the math before 9:30 at night. "If you're having trouble
with it, let's work on it together. Let's find a way of solving
the problem, but let's not get out of the assignment." Since when
are blind people so much better at math that they don't need to
get all the exercise and practice that everybody else does?

Here
is an even harder one. Your youngster brings to you the English assignment
that has just been laboriously typed on the
typewriter, and you discover that the two-year-old was messing
with the keyboard and flipped the stencil key or that the
typewriter ribbon ran out. What do you do then? You don't say, "I'll write
a note tomorrow telling the teacher that you really did it, but that, because
you are blind, you didn't notice that
the print wasn't on the page."

I think of a
time when I was a dinner guest in the home of a family with a blind youngster.
The mother was busy entertaining
the guests, preparing the meal, and supervising the homework
process going on downstairs in the basement, where the computer
was. The youngster did the homework with some grumbling. He has a
tidy mind and doesn't like to have extra things left on his
directory when he finishes with assignments. When he gets out of
a document and is finished with it--like a homework assignment--
he, as a matter of reflex habit, erases the document. He meant to
send this one to the printer; instead he sent it into oblivion.
What did Mom say? "Oh, poor child. I'll fix it with the teacher,"
or "I'll help you with it after dinner." Maybe it was easier to
do the right thing because there was a guest present, and she had
no alternative. She sent him back down with the cheering news
that "It will be easier to do the second time around, because
you'll remember some of the answers, and maybe you'll also
remember not to send it into oblivion before you've printed it
the next time around."

It's a hard way to go,
but you are shaping your child's character. You are building self-respect
and the implicit
knowledge in your youngster that he or she is as good as
everybody else. There are times when, from a parent's standpoint,
it seems easier to give in and take some of the perks that are
offered. You'll see signs some places, "Disabled people half
price," "Disabled children free." It's tempting when it's an
$8.00 fee to line right up and take advantage of that sort of
thing. It's very tempting when you see a long line at an
amusement park, and people are willing to let you cut in at the
front because you have a blind child. But there isn't any
privilege that doesn't have its repercussions, and there is no
such thing as a free lunch.

If people give freebies to blind people, it is because they
think they are pitiable. If they let--as my children used to say-
-you take cuts in a line, it's because they think that a blind
child is fragile, can't stand up, can't wait in line. They feel
sorry for the child and for you for having such a child. Is that
really the message you want to give about competence?

I
was talking to the parent of a disabled youngster, who
said, "You know, I just don't understand why you fuss about pre-
boarding aircraft. We have always been invited to pre-board, and
it saves such a hassle."

I said to him, "Look,
all parents with young children are invited to pre-board. It's easier to
stow an infant, diaper bags,
toddler, and Teddy bears--all of the paraphernalia that goes with
young children--without people standing in the aisle behind you
mentally or literally tapping their feet, waiting for you to get
out of the way. That is appropriate. It is also appropriate, if
with an older disabled child you genuinely require more time to
get down the jetway or into your row, to take that invitation to
pre-board. But if you don't need the time, if the child really
can move along as fast as anyone else, then do you really want to
give your child the message that he or she has to go first, has
to be singled out, has to endure being stared at with a lump in
the throat and tears in the eyes, has to have different rules
applied to him or her?"

Let me be clear. One
of the most important things you need to do is to help your child come to
an accurate understanding of
the amount of help he or she really does need. Last fall I was on
an international flight alone. When you are up at forty-thousand
feet, they pass out these forms that you have to fill out before
you can get through Immigration. I was in a row with no other
people. There was nobody I could charm into volunteering to help
me fill out this form. I stopped a crew member and said, "Unless
you think that I can fill out this form in Immigration, I think
probably a crew member, at a convenient time, could help me a
great deal by filling out this form to my dictation." She came
back when she had a moment and filled out the form. That was an
appropriate request for assistance because I really did need the
help.

It is important that your child learn to understand what is
a legitimate and appropriate request for additional assistance.
Part of your job is to help your child define for himself or
herself what constitutes independence. I once learned of an
elderly gentleman who had lost his sight late in life. He made
the comment that he loved to go grocery shopping since he had
gone blind, because his daughter walked along in front of the
cart pulling it, and he walked along behind it with his hands on
the cart handle and he didn't have to use his cane. His
definition of independence was not looking blind. That was the
only time in his life that he didn't look blind. He wasn't
independent. He wasn't traveling alone; he didn't even have a
cane with him. If his daughter had wandered off, he would have
been stranded. That was not independence. He was seventy-five,
and there was no changing his point of view. But your children
are young.

Independence is going where you want to, when you want to,
and doing what you want to by yourself, organizing what you want
to do and getting it done. If you can do that, whether you're
using readers or taxis or canes or a dog, you're independent. It
is important that you understand that that's what constitutes
independence. Your job is to teach your child and the people
around your child the value of some of the things that are so
very important about blindness: why it is necessary for a blind
youngster to master Braille and to be able to use a slate and
stylus efficiently, rapidly, and effectively; why it's important
for your child to be doing all of the schoolwork; why it's
important not to jump ahead in line; why audible traffic signals,
for example, are a dangerous and lousy exchange for good cane
travel training.

How do you know? How do you know what the most important
things are? I've told you a number of them today. I guarantee you
there are ten thousand more and at least seventy-three times
every single day when you have got to know what it is that blind
people need to have and do and how they ought to be thinking
about themselves and what is the right choice for your child
today. There aren't any absolute black-and-white, yes-or-no
answers that can be laid down. Otherwise, we could print them all
up, and everybody would then know. It doesn't work that way.

How do you know? You look around you. You find blind adults
who are the kind of people you would like to see your child grow
up to be. And you can be sure that if that person is the kind of
person that you hope your child will be, then the standards and
the attitudes that person has are probably the ones you want to
instill in your youngster. You read the Braille Monitor and
Future Reflections--I might say that the summer issue is
absolutely smashing; it's just wonderful! You read the articles
and ponder them in your heart. We try to include things that help
people to develop good attitudes about blindness. These should be
of some real help and instruction to you so that gradually your
reflexes will become good and solid, and you will begin to teach
your child.

You will find, as your child grows in the normal natural
progression that happens with all children, that your child will
begin to assume the responsibility for initiating the
explanations of why it is that he or she has to submit the
English paper in print rather than on cassette, for explaining to
the college professor why, although the map drill isn't very
useful, he or she expects to be held responsible for all the
geographic information that the other students will get from
drawing maps. Your child will begin to have the solid, strong
attitudes about blindness that will result in his or her living a
full and productive life, and your job will be complete.

Thank you.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON CHANGING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BLIND

by James Gashel

From the Associate Editor: James Gashel, Director of
Governmental Affairs for the National Federation of the Blind,
has worked for many years to change society's understanding of
what it means to be blind. He addressed the Parents of Blind
Children seminar on Sunday morning, June 30, 1991. Here is what
he said:

Thank you all for being here this morning, especially those
of you who haven't been to one of these conventions before; thank
you for coming because what we're doing here is vital to the
lives of blind people, to your family, and to your youngsters,
who will be the blind adults of the future.

The
theme of this morning is, "We're Changing What It Means
to Be Blind." As I walked into the room, I thought back--I don't
know, thirty or forty years ago, let's put it that way--when I
could have been here with my parents. I wasn't because we didn't
have meetings like this. There weren't opportunities for my
parents and me to meet with other blind people and to get to know
how blind people can organize and take charge of their own lives.

When
I was growing up, the best thing that a blind child's parents could do, really
their only option, was to send the blind
child away. Think about that. Think what it does to family life.
I don't need to talk about all that, but the point is, that's
what happened to me and to many of the blind people here. I well
recall what happened to me. I was age eighteen, a graduate of the
school for the blind, visiting at home on a weekend a year or so
after graduation. I said to my mother, "I think I will go
downtown tomorrow and do some shopping; there are a few things I
need to pick up." We didn't live in a huge city, but it was a
town of about 30,000. They had bus service. By that time I had
been living in Des Moines, Iowa, which was a city of a quarter of
a million people. I had traveled all over Des Moines and to other
cities. I was thoroughly confident about getting around, so I
said to my mother, "I think I'll go downtown and do a little
shopping tomorrow."

She said, "Don't
you think you ought to take somebody with
you?"

I thought about that and said, "It wouldn't really be too
convenient," besides which I didn't really want to.

As
that discussion continued, her worry became clear, and
finally she said, "Are you sure you can cross the street alone?"
I was eighteen years old. This is something you say to a four-
year-old: "Are you sure you can cross the street alone?" Of
course, I could and I did. But think about this.

This is the consequence--really a small consequence with
major implications--of what happened when parents used to have to
send a child away. My parents had no exposure to what it does
mean to be blind. Their only experience was, I've got to look
after this child, and I'm not sure he can cross the street alone
at age eighteen. Well, she doesn't ask me whether I can cross the
street alone anymore.

Things do change. We are changing what it means to be blind,
and principally we are doing it through political action. But
political action must have philosophical underpinnings. You have
to want something; you have to believe in something; you have to
have a philosophy, a set of values to shoot for. In the matter of
blindness, you can summarize that set of values in the phrase,
the National Federation of the Blind, because we do have a set of
values, a philosophy about blindness that the other speakers this
morning have articulated. In the National Federation of the Blind
we believe that, when you are blind, you can compete on terms of
absolute equality with people who are sighted. We believe that
blindness is only one of several hundred or a thousand other
characteristics that people have, that it isn't necessarily more
significant or more outstanding than any other, that while it
isn't always positive, there are other characteristics that can
offset blindness. You need to look at the totality of a person
rather than setting him or her apart because of one particular
characteristic.

Now with respect to teaching the
rest of this country--let alone the world--our philosophy, we have a very
long way to go.
We're truly only beginning, but we had to start somewhere. Twenty
years ago, the mother who said to me, "Are you sure you can cross
the street alone?" was at a much different point. Now we have
parents who know that blind people can cross the street alone
when they are age eighteen. We have made a lot of progress, but
we have much further to go. We won't all be free as blind people
or parents of blind children until we have gotten to the point
where all of us believe in our hearts and down deep in our guts,
as well as in our minds, that blindness is a normal
characteristic, that it can be reduced to the level of a mere
nuisance. But we will get there.

Consider laws that have been passed, 94-142 for example,
which in the case of blind people simply speeded up the process
whereby children were educated in their own homes and
communities. It also gave parents a greater role in learning
about blindness and blindness issues. As I was saying, when I was
a child, the only option parents had was sending their blind
children away. But now you have the responsibility if you think
about it; laws like 94-142 brought the responsibility back to the
parents. It happened through political action.

Take the recent passage of the Americans With Disabilities
Act, which is a non-discrimination law. It says that in
employment, public accommodations, and many other areas, you
cannot be discriminated against on the basis of a disability. It
won't make people believe in equality; it won't get us to the
point overnight where everybody has accepted the idea that
blindness can be reduced to the level of a mere nuisance or that
blindness is a normal characteristic. But it will speed up the
process of integration so that blind people are closer to the
mainstream of society, so that we can get into the board rooms
and work rooms. We will be where sighted people are, and we will
be seen. Our talents and abilities can be used. And over the
course of time, people will begin to find that blindness is just
another characteristic.

There are equal housing laws, which say that you cannot be
discriminated against in housing. Just last year a situation
arose in Anchorage, Alaska. (These things don't happen a lot, but
they could happen to your blind youngsters as they grow up and
begin to get their own housing.) The people running this
apartment building said that the mother of a blind person in her
late teens or early twenties would have to move out of her
apartment building because the blind daughter visited
occasionally. Think about that. This mother and daughter turned
to the National Federation of the Blind to figure out what to do.
We got hold of the housing people and told them what to do
[Applause], and the mother still lives there.

But you see, that's what can happen through political
action. Let me mention court actions. We've had situations in
which blind people have not been hired for employment or have
been released from jobs. We're dealing with one case right now,
in which a blind man who was living down in Texas was doing a
good job for the Pillsbury Company. All of a sudden Pillsbury was
dissatisfied because he was becoming more blind. When he started
the job, he could see pretty well. As the years went by, his
retinitis pigmentosa brought more limited vision, and he had to
start using computers and adaptive devices. That wasn't good
enough for Pillsbury, and they found reasons to let him go. He
didn't have anywhere to turn. He was losing his job until he came
to the National Federation of the Blind. We have taken that case
to the United States Department of Labor, which found that the
Pillsbury dough boy had violated the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
Don't buy Pillsbury. Whenever you buy a roll of that cookie
dough, think of what happened to Dave Schuh. The Pillsbury
Company is now faced with the charge of violating a federal law
for removing a blind person from his employment. The case isn't
done yet, but before it is, we are going to prove that blind
people have the right to work at Pillsbury just as much as they
have the right to work anywhere else.

In the blindness field you can't go to your special
education teachers and have them talk to you about employment
protection because it's not their territory. When you are looking
for political action, when you're looking for a movement that can
change what people think about blindness, the only thing you have
to turn to in this country is the National Federation of the
Blind. I have learned that from personal experience.

I think of situations in which sighted people in my
educational career, for example, the superintendent at the school
for the blind, told me I couldn't be a school teacher. When I was
two weeks away from graduating, he said I should be a speech
therapist rather than a classroom speech teacher. I respected
this gentleman. He was the superintendent of the school for the
blind. At that age I was greatly impressed by his position. Yet
it wasn't until I met the National Federation of the Blind that I
learned I could be a teacher. I did teach school, and it was one
of the most valuable experiences of my life in proving to myself
that blindness does not prevent one from succeeding as an
educator.

I would not have learned that lesson
if it had not been for the National Federation of the Blind; if it had not
been for the
fact that the Federation was out there opening up opportunities
in school teaching, doing surveys in states, attacking situations
of discrimination; if the Federation had not been out there
working with institutions of higher education to open the doors
which had been closed to us in entering the teaching profession.
The Federation worked hard at that in the 1950s and early 1960s.
By the time I came along in the late 1960s, the doors of
opportunity to be a school teacher were open. But the
superintendent of the school for the blind believed that they
were still closed. No blind person belonged in teaching. He said, "Why don't you be a speech therapist?" But
the National
Federation of the Blind (the blind people who came before me) was
out there working, opening up those opportunities. By the time I
was ready to take advantage of those opportunities, they were
there. That's my point. So a lot of us have been laboring for
many, many years in the political vineyards--in the Congress, in
the state legislatures, and throughout our country--to provide
these opportunities.

In the state legislatures one of our latest projects is a
Braille literacy campaign with model legislation. We have found
that blind people are being discriminated against in that the
educators and society have tried to keep us illiterate. The
literacy rates among blind people, particularly blind youngsters,
are declining sharply. This has serious, devastating consequences
for the future. All of us need to join the literacy campaign. We
need to pass those literacy laws so that, when your blind
youngsters get into school, they will have the opportunities some
of us have had to become literate in Braille. But it won't happen
because of the educators. It will only happen because of the
blind and the parents who now recognize their responsibility and
their opportunity to help their children learn what it really
means to be blind. We can be blind, we can be successful, and we
can make progress in our society. We can be taxpayers rather than
tax burdens. It will only happen because of the political
process, and the essence of the political process in this field
is the National Federation of the Blind. Thank you very much.

WHAT IT MEANS TO BE BLIND
IN OUR HEARTS AND IN OUR MINDS

From the Associate Editor: Following the remarks of seasoned
Federation leaders who talked about the roles of parents and of
the NFB in improving the lives of today's blind children, the
participants in the June 30, 1991, seminar for the parents of
blind children next heard from a panel of students who have
experienced first-hand the problems blind children face and the
impact of the National Federation of the Blind in solving them.
Peggy Pinder, Second Vice President of the Federation and
Chairman of the NFB Scholarship Committee, moderated the panel.
Here is the way the discussion went:

Peggy Pinder: It is a humbling experience to have the
opportunity to follow three such powerful, effective, and
experienced speakers, and since I don't have to worry about that,
I am sure that the panel participants are also very humbled.
[Laughter] I think it is very fitting that we have had three
long-time, effective, and capable leaders in the National
Federation of the Blind--Barbara Pierce, Dr. Jernigan, and Jim
Gashel--telling you about themselves and how they reflect on the
blind child and the blind child's future.

We're
lucky to have three students to balance those three leaders--three of our
young leaders of the blind to serve on this
panel, discussing "Blindness in Our Hearts and in Our Minds." As
I have thought about these three panelists, it seems to me that
there are three things they have in common: all three of them are
blind; all three of them have achieved academic success and
distinction (proved not only by their winning National Federation
of the Blind scholarships, but also, as you will hear, being
genuinely distinguished, capable, scholars in their chosen
fields). That's the second thing they have in common--academic
distinction and success in objective terms. The third thing is a
commitment to change. It would seem that these last two are
inconsistent. Why would they want to change if things are working
for them now? Why change? Change what? And change to what? I
think those are the questions that the panelists are here this
morning to talk about.

I will begin by introducing
to you one of this year's scholarship winners, Olegario Cantos from California.
Ollie will
be a senior at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where
he is working on a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.
Last year he was appointed to serve as vice president in charge
of student services. He has an office as well as having his
academic responsibilities. This coming academic year, he will be
serving as executive vice president and chair of the Student
Senate. That is an elected position. He was elected by his peers
to serve, as he put it, "second in command of the students." He
has also been serving and will continue to serve on the Legal Aid
Foundation for the city of Los Angeles, and growing out of that
and his other work, he was nominated for and has now been
presented one of the outstanding youth awards that the city of
Los Angeles grants.

In addition to these and other achievements that I won't go
into, Ollie was also recently selected to serve on a jury. Jury
service for blind people isn't common and isn't taken for
granted. Most blind people called for such service are excused.
Ollie was not excused. He was seated on the jury, and he was
selected as the foreman. And in this criminal trial (being a
former prosecutor I have to tell you the end of the story) the
jury found the defendant guilty. With all of these credentials,
as you can see, this is a gentleman who has made a success. Here
is Ollie Cantos.

Olegario Cantos: When I was asked by Barbara Cheadle to
speak about the National Federation of the Blind's changing what
it means to be blind, I gave the topic a great deal of thought.
How could I put this into words? Then I remembered a Chinese
proverb that was given to me by my mentor Sharon Gold, President
of the National Federation of the Blind of California. The
proverb goes like this: "Be not afraid of growing slowly; be
afraid only of standing still." It was then I realized in looking
back that coming to a deeper understanding of the reality of
blindness was a result of a constant process of growth and

I was born two months prematurely, being diagnosed as having
retrolental-fibroplasia. As a result I had no vision in my left
eye and partial vision in my right. Since I did have some
residual vision, all emphasis in my life in everything I did was
placed on the use of that vision, and my attitudes were shaped
accordingly.

I remember as a child what I thought
about blindness. At first I did not know what blindness was. Then, as I grew
older, I
interacted with other children, children who happened to be fully
sighted. They were allowed to run around, play tag, and use
playground equipment. Though this was sometimes true in my case,
there was a subtle difference. More often than with other
children, I was either prevented from or discouraged from
engaging in any vigorous activities. "Why can't I do things like
everyone else?" I asked.

The reply was, "Well you can't see too well, and there are
just some things that you can't do." This was in reference to
vigorous activity. Gradually I acquired a misconception of
myself, that I was inferior to the sighted, that having sight
meant having ability, and that my lack of sight necessarily meant
that I was not quite as capable as those with full visual
capacity. By the same token, I also felt lucky. After all, I did
have some vision, unlike totally blind people, who were
unfortunate enough to be, I believed at that time, in need of
constant care and special attention. Based upon this
misconception about blindness, I often remarked, "Oh God, don't
accuse me of being blind; I am not helpless." This was my
philosophy about blindness--the philosophy of avoidance, and it
affected every area of my life. It affected what I believed about
certain issues, including Braille.

When I was in first grade, I was taught how to read and
write print just as were children who were sighted. At first it
was slow. We were all slow because reading and writing were still
new to us, but soon a gap developed. This gap between their
reading and writing speed and mine began to increase. In time
fellow students became faster and faster in both reading and
writing while I generally remained at the same level. In fourth
grade something else happened. The print in the text books became
smaller. In addition, the reading assignments were longer and
more complex, requiring more time. Moreover, they were made more
often than in the earlier grades.

Now I was faced with a dilemma. What was I to do? This
material was really hard, and I had to find a way to deal with
it. I thought that the most important factor was that I could
read print, and I must do this at all costs so help me God, and
that is what I did, for a while. I increased my use of adaptive
devices such as magnifying glasses and closed circuit
televisions, and, to some degree, it did work. However, there was
a drawback. I could read at a maximum speed--and I tried very
hard--of twenty words per minute for fifteen minutes at most. Yet
I was very, very happy with this performance. After all, I
managed to avoid having to learn Braille, which I believed was
only for totally blind people and was a last resort if a person
could not read one letter of print. This conviction was
strengthened by my belief that Braille was bulky and slow. I
thought, especially later in the light of various developments in
equipment and technology, that Braille was obsolete.

My
beliefs with regard to the use of Braille also affected my belief in the
use of the long white cane, or of any cane for
that matter. I vowed, "I don't need to carry a cane. I will
never, never carry a cane; not until the day I die will I carry a
cane." Why? Because I thought people would think I was helpless,
because, after all, blind people are helpless. Since I was not
helpless, I felt I was not blind. Since I was not blind, I did
not need to carry a cane, and I refused. This was my stance, but
I gave little consideration to the fact that I got into more
accidents than did the average sighted person, and this was not
due to clumsiness. Literally, I fell down steps, tripped over
curbs, and otherwise bumped into obstacles in my way that I could
easily have avoided by simply walking around them. To justify
this state of affairs, I said, "Well, I don't get into accidents
that often, not that often." But I did not ask myself why I
should get into any accidents at all.

Then I found the National Federation of the Blind, and I
attended my first national convention last year. I tell you,
ladies and gentlemen, for the first time, for the very first
time, I gained a full sense of who and what I was, and I know who
and what I am. I am a person who happens to be blind, equal in
every way. I am equal in capability and competence. We are
neither tragically deprived nor wondrously gifted. Rather we are
equal to the sighted except in not having the physical ability to
see. I now know, because of the National Federation of the Blind,
that the obstacles that we as blind people face do not come from
blindness itself but rather from prevailing public attitudes.
The reality is that, given the proper training in basic skills
and the opportunity to succeed, we will be able to compete with
the sighted on terms of full equality. If only my parents had
known back then what they know now, if only they had had within
them the philosophy of the National Federation of the Blind,
things would have been so different in my life. They would have
fought for me to learn Braille. They would have made sure that I
was well versed in cane travel. Most important, they would have
known that it is respectable to be blind.

After
last year, when I returned from the convention, I knew that I had a challenge
ahead of me, that of telling my parents
about the new philosophy I had found. So when I walked in the
door carrying a long white cane for the very first time, they
said it was the most pitiful state in which they had ever seen
me. "You have never carried a cane in your life; why do you need
one now? After all, you haven't been getting into that many
accidents, and even if you were to get into some, at least you
weren't carrying a cane." I asked them what was wrong with
carrying a cane. They said, "If you carry a cane, don't you
understand, people will think you are blind."

I
said, "So people think that I am blind."

They
said, "But don't you see that if people think you are
blind, they'll think that you are helpless." Thus raged the
battle. It got to the point of a heated argument. One of them
said, "If you carry that thing when you are with me in public, I
will not acknowledge that I know you." Later we had a discussion
about Braille. I told my parents that I was going to learn it.
They responded that Braille was just for totally blind people. "I
don't want anyone to know that you are blind."

I
said, "Look, all my life I have sacrificed efficiency
because I had to read print, and look where it has gotten me. I
have done well enough, but I could have done better."

"Well," they said, "We are not going to budge." I said that
I would not budge either. They thought they wouldn't, but they
did. They budged, and in time they grew to understand and to see,
especially my mother. When she returned from the convention of
the National Federation of the Blind of California in November,
she said, "Look Ollie, you better make sure to learn all that
Braille, and learn it fast. I am watching you. Make sure to carry
your cane at all times." I am proud to say, ladies and gentlemen-
-and believe me that last year I would not have dreamed this
would happen--but I am proud to say that they are here at this
meeting today. Mom and Dad, where are you? Stand up. [Applause]

This is illustrative of the way that each of us has the
power to touch the lives of everyone else. We must persevere.
What often happens--many of you may have had this experience--is
that school districts may resist or completely refuse to give
Braille instruction to your children. They may refuse to teach
your child how to use the long white cane or any cane. Remain
persistent, because when they see that you mean business, when
they see that we as an organization mean business, they will at
least listen. When they listen, they will begin to learn. When
they learn, they will begin to transform their newly acquired
knowledge into actions in their own lives. Once that happens, a
ripple effect occurs. One person affects a few, who affect a few
more,who affect a few more, who affect countless others. Can one
person change the world? Yes indeed.

One year ago, I attended the convention of the National
Federation of the Blind not knowing one character of Braille. I
can say with pride today that I am increasingly making Braille an
integral part of my life. In fact, the speech that I have given
to you today was the result of Braille notes right here.
[Applause] And July 2, 1991, will mark the very first
anniversary of my use of the long white cane, and I know who I
am, and I will never go back. [Applause]

It has been said that the National Federation of the Blind
changes what it means to be blind, but what should it mean to be
blind? It means that your blind children have the right to learn
how to read Braille alongside sighted children who are learning
to read print. [Applause] It means that your child has the right
to carry and to learn to use the long white cane so that he or
she can travel independently in society. It means that some day,
when your children grow up to be the leaders of tomorrow, they
will apply for jobs and be considered on the basis of their
abilities and not be victims of discrimination. It means, ladies
and gentlemen, that finally, some day, we will all walk down the
streets knowing that we have been accepted by society as the
first-class citizens we are. This is our motivation. This is our
drive. This is why we have the Parents Division. This is why we
have the National Federation of the Blind. May we remember always
to grow and never to stop, and may the future be brighter for
your children and for your children's children. Thank you.

Peggy Pinder: You can see that this gentleman will be a
long-time leader of the National Federation of the Blind.

We go now to our next panelist, who won her National
Federation of the Blind scholarship in 1988. Melissa Lagroue will
be a senior next fall at Birmingham Southern College, where she
is earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education.
During her college years Melissa has faced what many blind people
have, one way or another--discrimination based on blindness. This
last academic year Melissa, who is in process of doing the course
work and student teaching to become a credentialed teacher in
Alabama, was told by the Education Department that her
application for teaching credentials was going to be reviewed.
The professor who told her this believed that, as a blind person,
she could not be a teacher and should be removed completely from
the Department of Education. Melissa didn't agree. She responded,
and through not only her strong efforts and advocacy, not only
through her contacts with the National Federation of the Blind
and the resources and encouragement she drew on here, but also
from other professors on the Education Department faculty who
were convinced that Melissa could and would be a teacher,
Melissa, was victorious. She will remain in the Department of
Education and will earn her degree and her teaching credential.

In addition to Melissa's work, she also does other things
such as volunteering to teach non-English speakers English. She
volunteers a great deal of time to the National Federation of the
Blind itself. She serves as the president of the National
Federation of the Blind of Alabama Student Division and has
worked hard to organize student divisions in other states. She
has also worked on the very, very difficult question of
standardized testing for blind people, which is a difficult
issue. Through her work and that of others in recent years, some
day blind people will be able to take standardized tests with
valid scores, exactly as do sighted students.

Finally, I'd like to mention something else about Melissa,
which some of you may not know. Not long ago Melissa came to New
Orleans for another purpose. She heard and accepted a marriage
proposal from John Williamson. So New Orleans has meaning for
Melissa beyond the NFB convention, and I want you to join me in
congratulating as well as welcoming Melissa Lagroue.

Melissa Lagroue: Why have you come? Why are you here? What
can the Federation do for you, and most important, what can the
Federation do for your kids? A lot! When I came to the National
Federation of the Blind convention in 1988, which was my first
convention and my first exposure to the National Federation of
the Blind, I had some really nifty ideas about blindness. I
thought all blind people should know Braille. I thought that some
blind people should use canes. And I thought that a few blind
people could succeed and be competent. I was wrong. Of course,
blind people should use Braille; that we know is true. But let's
talk a little about the cane.

I started out in
first or second grade--I lost my sight when I was six--using Braille. That
was fine. I understood that. I
even thought it was equal to print, and all was well and right
with that. Then my mother said, "You really ought to use a cane.
You go around holding people's hands, and that is not going to do
very well for you in junior high and high school." I said, "No,
there's no way."

What my mother didn't do
was to shove a cane into my hand
and tell me to "use it or you will not get where you want to go." What
she did was to hold my hand and lead me around. What I did was hold on to people
all the way through high school. It was a
great way to meet guys, I thought. [Laughter] I can tell you that
I didn't meet John that way.

Let me say some other
things about blind people's succeeding. I applied for a National Federation
of the Blind
scholarship, and I thought, "There's no way I won't get one.
Blind people aren't competent; they're not making the grades that
I am. They are not out there doing the extracurriculars that I am
doing. There's no way that I won't get one." Well I did get one,
actually, and I came to the convention thinking, "Hah, this is
going to be a cinch; this is not going to be a problem." As some
of you know, the Student Division conducts a poker-a-thon, where
you can go and play cards. That was going on the first night when
I came to the convention for the first time. I went over and
found that place, using my munchkin cane that came up to here,
and I found the place. I thought, "This is where I am supposed to
be, and now I can meet all of these dorky blind people." That's
honestly what I thought. I walked in and met people who are today
some of my best friends. It was amazing to me because, you see,
the only blind people I had ever known were those guys that
didn't have the training they needed, that didn't have the skills
they needed, that didn't have highly qualified, competent role
models from the very beginning to show them that they could be
more than society thought they could be. Those were the guys that
I knew. Those were the guys that I refused to associate with.

When
I first came to a National Federation of the Blind
convention, I thought, "They're making me come because they want
to look at me. I don't want to be around these blind people, so
I'll come, and I'll get the money, and I'll leave, and I'll never
think of the National Federation of the Blind again." That was
three years ago; this is my fourth convention.

That's
what I thought, and that's what I believed. But I've learned something different
now. You see, I was academically
successful; I did a lot of extracurriculars; I was a debater, a
drama person wandering around the stage. I thought that was neat,
but where I was not successful was in my own personal attitudes
towards blindness. I didn't think that it was respectable to be
blind. I thought it was embarrassing to be blind. I thought that
it was horrible to get up in front of a whole group of people,
holding a white cane, for instance. I thought that the white cane
was this huge signpost that said, "You are blind," and as Ollie
would say, "You are helpless." He is right; that's where a lot of
us are coming from.

His experience was different
from mine; he didn't get the skills. I got the skills. I got the opportunity
to get more
skills than I did because my parents knew that blind people could
do stuff; they just didn't quite know what. Before I went to my
first convention, I told my parents that I had to go because
these ridiculous people wanted me to, and why didn't they just
give me the money? They said, "To that organization? They are so
militant; they are so obnoxious! We hear that they have a guy who
stands out on the runway in front of airplanes." [Laughter]
Well, times have changed since then, and my parents' ideas are a
little more positive about the National Federation of the Blind,
as are the ideas of some other parents we know.

But what you can get is something that I never got. What you
can give to your children is something my parents couldn't give
to me. It is going to take some strength on your part. You're
going to have to make your child sit down and learn Braille.
There's no question about it. You're going to have to sit down
and hand your child a cane and talk to him about the merits of
cane travel, why it is necessary. Then, when he throws the cane
down and refuses to use it, you're going to have to leave him. I
don't quite mean literally standing in the middle of a shopping
mall, but if it takes walking away from your child to make him
pick up that cane and get where he needs to go, then you'll have
to do it. If you don't, your child will be hanging on to people
all the way through high school.

In some ways,
I feel I am preaching to the choir because you guys are here, but this is
why you need to bring more people with
you. Their kids are going to be hanging on to people, let me tell
you. Do you want to know one of the most uncomfortable situations
you can be in? It is going out on a date with someone and not
being able to get to the bathroom by yourself. Can you imagine
walking up to your date and saying, "Excuse me, could you take me
to the bathroom? And while I am in there bumbling around, trying
to find where to go, could you please stand outside the door and
wait for me? It is not a pleasant experience. I speak as one who
knows. I've done it. You do all sorts of stupid things to try to
hide your blindness.

You can also teach your kids philosophically. You can teach
them that it is respectable to be blind. How can you do that? By
providing them with the role models that we have in the
Federation. We have some incredible people running around here--some awfully successful people and some awfully fun people.
That's what it comes down to. I always thought that blind people
were boring. They didn't succeed and weren't fun, and I found out
that I was wrong. You need to sit down with your kids and talk to
them about blindness. There are going to be some pretty painful
and uncomfortable times.

This is something else
that my parents didn't do because they didn't know they needed to. I was
seventeen years old, and I
was sitting down with my father, who was teaching me how to sign
my name. That hurt. As you know, when you are in first or second
grade, you learned how to sign your name. Everybody else does.
When you are sighted, you do it that way. I didn't. I was
seventeen years old, scribbling out M, E loops over, L is a
little taller, I--that's a straight line; and I couldn't do it, I
couldn't make it legible. That was one of the hard times, and my
mother couldn't do it. She just did not have the heart to do it.
She sat down and said, "I can't do this; it hurts me that you are
blind right now." That may sound strange, yet it might hit home.

Remember, get done early what you can do. Teach Braille
early. Make sure your child learns how to sign his or her name
early. Get the cane in your child's hands. Make sure that the
skills your child needs will be taught. Make sure that the
philosophical attitudes are there.

I remember going to EPCOT in high school when I didn't use a
cane. I held on to my mother, and we got to go to the front of
the line. I would die before I would do that now, but I didn't
know any better at the time. I did not think about tomorrow, but
you have to. I suppose there are things now that I do that many
people don't understand. There are privileges I don't accept now,
and people don't know why I don't. You have got to teach your
kids not to take what they don't need. You have got to teach
yourself not to allow them to take what they don't need. You must
provide them with the role models. You can tell them why they
shouldn't take what they don't need. Explaining takes a lot of
patience. It took a lot of tears on the part of my parents
anyway. But you can do it; I know you can, and with the
Federation's help you will.

Peggy Pinder: Our final panelist is Michael Gosse from
Connecticut. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the field of electrical
engineering at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Michael was a 1985 scholarship winner. He will receive his Ph.D.
in the spring of 1992. His area of expertise, and the subject of
his thesis, is data transmission through the use of microwaves,
and he tells me that his concentration is in the area of
stability, which he says is not an obvious thing to want. I am
not sure I agree with him. [Laughter] He has also published on
the topic "Monolithic up-converters"--just in case any of you
were wondering about the topic of his published works thus far.

Michael has also experienced, as has Melissa, that blatant
kind of discrimination that a blind person can face, you never
know when. In the course of his work towards his Ph.D., Michael
has served as a teaching assistant, as many Ph.D. candidates do.
We will shortly get a sample of his classroom manner. But in the
course of his studies, he sought at one point to become an
instructor of nuclear physics not only to civilians but also to
Navy classes. Now the United States Navy categorizes its
instructors in nuclear physics as combat-ready personnel. And
since they are, they cannot be blind people. Michael could not be
the teacher since they'd have to commission him as an officer and
treat him as a combat-ready person. Now the logic of that
argument has always escaped me. I think it escaped Michael, and I
think that some day one of the things we need to accomplish is
acceptance of the notion that our blind men and women want to
serve our country in its armed services just as other people do.
While combat may not be an option for blind people, there are a
great many things in the armed services that blind people can do.

Michael also writes poetry. He is a triathlon competitor,
and the longest one he has completed is thirty-two miles of
consecutive swimming, running, and biking, which makes me tired
even to think about. Here, for our final panel presentation, is
not only the person I have already described to you but somebody
who, since 1985, has shown a great deal of dedication and
increasing commitment to the National Federation of the Blind and
who was recently elected by the National Federation of the Blind
of Connecticut to serve as its president: Michael Gosse.

Michael Gosse: Before I start, I just want to point out that
our first speaker, Ollie, is a 1991 scholarship winner and that
our second speaker, Melissa, was an '88 winner and I was an '85
winner. I love patterns; three years separate each of us. I love
that sort of thing. [Laughter] I could go into patterns, but I
won't. Next Monday I am going to be teaching my first course
ever, as a professor, and I'll walk into the classroom, and lay
down the rules of the course as every professor does, and I will
also make the students aware of the fact that I am blind. After
giving my little speech--raising your hand won't do you much good
in my class--I'll pick up a piece of chalk and start writing my
equations all over the blackboard. That will confuse a lot of
people, not the stuff I will be writing, although that will
confuse them some, but just the fact that I am writing on the
blackboard when I just finished telling them I was blind. Whether
I had joined the National Federation of the Blind or not, I would
probably have told the class that I was blind, because when I was
little my parents made it clear to me that there was nothing
wrong with it. And I didn't know any other blind people or any of
the stereotypes. I was kind of a sheltered child. If I didn't
have to read it, I didn't read it. There was never any
information about blindness coming to me other than my parents'
telling me that I could be whatever I wanted to be, so I didn't
know that the stereotypical blind person stood on the street
corner and sold pencils. I had none of that in me, so I wasn't
afraid to admit to anybody that I was blind.

My
parents did a very good job teaching me that achievement was something that
you did for yourself and that you had to get
around other people to do it sometimes but it was up to you. And
that was the early lesson of childhood when I was still under
their guidance. But later on when I started to want to do things
that interested me, I would occasionally run into "Well you can't
do that."

"Why not?

"Because
you are blind."

"But that doesn't make sense; that's not what you taught me
when I was little." Blindness at that stage of my life, say
around nine to twelve, started becoming an excuse, not for me,
but for them. If I didn't succeed in something, the question was
raised, "Does this have something to do with your vision?" And
that used to annoy me a lot. I used to cry when they did that.

I
remember French class and getting a progress report, which meant you weren't
doing well. That didn't surprise me at all
because I knew I wasn't doing well, but it surprised my parents.
So they sat me down, and we had this long discussion. "Do you
think it's because of your vision?" That made me very upset, and
I said to them something along the lines of "Why can't I just
fail like everybody else can?" It was just French; it wasn't
anything to do with my lack of intelligence, or whatnot. I just
didn't like French, and I didn't want to do well in French,
didn't care about French. But it was obvious to me that, if I had
really wanted to, I could have done well in French because, after
all, I was doing well in history and things like that, and French
wasn't all that different, so it couldn't be my vision. I wasn't
going to let them get away with that.

They did
that throughout my high school career, and at that point I started looking
for an identity. I didn't have one.
Before I was fine; I was legally blind. I could explain that to
people and what it meant to me, but as my parents started
compartmentalizing me--"Well are you not able to do this because
you are blind?"--I started thinking that maybe I shouldn't be
blind. Maybe I should be sighted. And I can probably go through
my life as a sighted person and use the excuse occasionally that
I can't do that because I can't see too well, but not let people
know that I am blind. I could probably do that. But that's not
the identity I want.

Like Melissa, in my college
years I got an application for an NFB scholarship. One of the scholarships
was specifically for
scientists, lawyers, engineers, and so forth; and I figured, "How
many engineers can there be in the country who are blind, come
on? I'll apply and win this scholarship." But unlike Melissa, I
didn't win the first time I applied, but I went to a convention
and found out quickly why I hadn't won. [Laughter] There are
people like Melissa and Ollie running around doing very well, and
I was doing well but hadn't really come to terms with my
identity.

Also, occasionally you run into a little discrimination. And
even though you can step around it as an individual maybe, that
doesn't sit well with me. I can't just think of myself. If I
thought only of myself, what kind of teacher would I be? I would
go in and teach my class for an hour and say well if you didn't
catch it then you wouldn't catch it any time. Or I could give
myself a little more room and help other people at the same time
as I am helping myself.

When I was seven or eight,
we started doing phonics. I don't know if people in the audience know what
phonics is or not or if
it has gone out of style. I thought it was out of style then. It
was, learn how to say the words properly and then you can learn
how to spell them properly. Well, I didn't want to do phonics, so
I told my parents that I couldn't read the phonics workbook. They
said, "Okay, you don't have to do phonics."

The
teacher said, "Okay, you don't have to do phonics." When
I was in high school, I had a fifth grade spelling level, and it
is all because parents and teachers listened to a seven- or
eight-year-old kid lie to them, frankly lie to them; and they
didn't think "We'll have to find another way." That's what you as
parents always have to keep in mind; you have to find another
way. There is always another way; there's always a solution.
That's what engineers like to think anyway. There is always
something we can rig up, something to make things work. Good old
Star Trek's Scotty would never give up, right? [Laughter]

I remember my first convention; it was actually a state
convention in Connecticut. I walked into that room knowing that I
was a finalist for a state scholarship, and I met other blind
people for the first time. I realized that you could get blinder
than I was, which should have occurred to me before then. They
were doing all sorts of things. Throughout the morning, hearing
them speak, I could see that this was my identity. In each one of
these people--that is how I thought of them then, these people--
there was a part of me. There was something I could identify with
in each one of them. I didn't need to look for the part of me to
identify with the sighted community because there were plenty of
people like me. But I could identify with each of these blind
people, with some experience. When I heard them speak and I heard
them say that blind people can do this and blind people can do
that, I knew they were right, right then, and so I decided to
join. But I didn't decide to get involved; they decided that for
me. [Laughter] But it was finally walking into a room and having
people understand me that was significant. I think that the worst
thing a blind child can do is grow up isolated from other blind
children or other blind people. I made do when I was a child and
made up my own rules and regulations about blindness. I was so
naive; I really was. I was eighteen years old, I think, when I
had my first itinerant teacher who was blind, and he was a
special blind person. he must have been really rich because he
had a driver. [Laughter] I was eighteen years old, and I didn't
figure out that the state was paying for his driver. I thought it
was really cool, though, and I wanted one. [Laughter]

In
my freshman year of college, I took a lot of flack from the chemistry teacher,
who didn't want me in her lab. I was a
hazard. I had gone through two years of high school chemistry
(one extra year, including independent research), so I knew I
could go into her lab and could perform any experiment she wanted
me to. She allowed me in after I talked her into it, and it is a
two-semester course. Halfway through the second semester, after I
had been doing my lab work for a semester and a half, she comes
in and stands next to me at my lab bench and says, "Can I help
you do that?"

I said, "sure." What
we were doing was taking stranded pieces of copper and wrapping them around
a piece of zinc and
sticking it into a tube. So I let her do that for me--wadding up
the copper and shoving it in the tube. Then while she was
standing there, I made sure that I carefully measured out all the
necessary acids to pour into this tube on top of this wadded
piece of copper and perform the rest of the experiment.

She
said, "Wow, you can actually do this, can't you?"

I
said, "No, I've been faking it for a semester and a half." It
turned out, and this shocked me a great deal, that she had a fourteen-year-old
son, who was legally blind. Just imagine, if
she didn't think I could wad up a piece of copper and put it into
a tube, what does she think her son can do? That's why you have
to get involved and do something. Thanks.

Peggy Pinder: Listening to our three panelists, I have heard
something, and I hope you have heard it too. I've heard all of
them say in their own ways that they are responsible for their
own competence, that they are responsible for the skills by which
they do things and the attitudes that form those skills. They are
responsible for their competence, and they are proud of the
competence that they have. I've heard them say that, but I have
also heard them say something else, and I want to join with them.
In each of their own ways they've said to you, join with us.
Become a part of us. That's partly where the competence comes
from. That is where the pride comes from, and that is where the
change comes. Change what? Change the notions of incompetence,
change the fact that we can't do some things unless we get a
different skill and a different attitude about it. Change the old
notion of blindness as helplessness, which each one of these
people held, and so did I. Change that. Change it to the pride
and competence, and change it through the National Federation of
the Blind. So I join with them in inviting you to join with us to
change what it means to be blind.

CHANGE THROUGH ROLE MODELING AND NETWORKING

From the Associate Editor: The final presentation of the
morning session at the 1991 seminar for parents and educators of
blind children was a panel of parents, moderated by Carol
Castellano, second vice president of the NFB's Parents of Blind
Children Division (POBC). They discussed what the Federation had
taught them and offered some excellent advice to parents based on
their own experience. The other members of the panel were Debby
Day of Bellingham, Washington, who chairs the POBC Network on
Blindness and Adoption; Marty Greiser of Dillon, Montana, a
member of the POBC Board of Directors; and Linda Balek of
Berryton, Kansas, who is a parent leader in Kansas, and whose
husband Tom is Secretary of the POBC. Here is what they had to
say:

Carol Castellano: This morning we will be talking about how
we are changing what it means to be blind through role modeling
and networking. I'd like to share some experiences that my family
has had. We are from New Jersey. I have two children, Serena, who
is seven and is blind, and John, who is four. We had early
exposure to the Federation, which I think was very lucky,
especially after hearing the scholarship winners discuss the
disadvantages they faced while growing up. When my daughter was
nine months old and in the hospital for eye surgery at Duke
University, the social worker gave me a lot of pamphlets of
information about groups and resources. He handed me Doris
Willoughby's book, A Resource Guide for Parents and Educators of
Blind Children, and he told me that I really needed to know about
this organization--not to get too close--"they are really
outrageous, militant, and uncooperative, but they have some
pretty good literature. So I read the book while my daughter was
undergoing surgery, and it put us on the road to success. I feel
that the Federation hasn't let us down yet and that we are really
on that road.

Here I have seen blind people--totally
blind, partially blind, whatever--in control, articulate, running things.
They are
very good role models for me. No one can tell me that my
daughter, who happens to be totally blind, can't do that too
someday, if she has the other attributes that support that kind
of leadership. This came home to me very strongly recently in a
parents support group that I attended, run by our state agency
for the blind, which provides our services: teaching Braille,
cane travel, etc. At this support group about thirty parents were
in the room, mostly parents of young children--babies to maybe
three or four years old. Some spoke up, saying that their
children were in regular nursery schools as opposed to a pre-
school handicapped setting. The counselor from the Commission,
our state agency, pointed out that the children that were in
regular schools had plenty of vision. It seemed to me that our
agency believes that the most important attribute a blind child
can have for success is vision. I raised my hand, before I could
stop myself, and said, "Gee, I'm really glad nobody told me that
when my child was young, because she is totally blind and in
kindergarten now and is doing fine. I am glad that I didn't hear
that she needed vision to succeed." So I do have a strong role
model here, and with the people we heard speak this morning, you
can't get much better than that. I wish I could speak that well.

Another time that it came home to us was when we were
applying for admission to a private school. We were talking to
the admissions director, and she told me that they had had a
blind student once at that school. I know that can be good or
bad. She said that she therefore knew what it would mean to have
a blind child in her school. When this seventh grader enrolled,
she did not know how to tell time. She had no table manners (this
was a sort of fancy private school that was concerned about
manners), and of course she couldn't find her way around the
building, and anyway she was late for all her classes because she
had to lug that big Braille writer around. I was glad that many
times I had seen people in this organization taking notes with a
slate and stylus. It really brought it home; you need to know how
to write using a slate. I don't want my child to have to lug a
cart or have a sighted person assisting her, getting her from
class to class. I know that it doesn't have to be so, and I was
able to educate that admissions director gently on the subject.

Another
thing that I have learned here is that sometimes what's necessary is a polite
but firm "no thank you" to unneeded
help. Everybody wants to help my daughter. That's the first thing
that jumps into anybody's mind when they see her. She's a cute
little thing, walking around with her little cane, and everybody
thinks, "how can I help you?" Serena couldn't talk for a long
time; now she sure can. We were concerned for a while about how
we would get her to take the responsibility of saying a polite
but firm "no thank you." Now she says things like "Why are you
taking my hand? I can do it myself. I don't need your help." Maybe we went
a little overboard in that lesson.

The last thing I want to mention is that I learned that
blindness in and of itself need never stop my daughter from doing
an activity or accomplishing a task. She may not be able to do it
for other reasons, but not because of blindness. I learned that
by finding out--again in this organization with so many blind
adults around--that if even one person has done a task, blindness
doesn't have to stop you. And if you have the necessary
attributes, you can go ahead.

I would like to illustrate this by telling you about a
family vacation we took. We went to northern California, about
four hours north of San Francisco, and we went on a hike through
a forest to a waterfall. We are from New Jersey and not the
biggest hikers in the world. I was on this hike with my mom, who
was about seventy at the time; my sister-in-law, who is a
California native and really knows what she is doing in the
woods; my son, who was two-and-a-half; and my daughter, who was
five-and-a-half. There were some times when the trail narrowed to
about two feet. There was a mountain face on the one side and a
drop-off on the other side, and way down below was a river that
you could hear but hardly see. There we all were, walking
through. It was a wonderful experience, and we had such a
wonderful time being close to nature and accomplishing this kind
of hike.

We made it to the falls, and we came down again and thought
it was terrific. It never occurred to me even once to leave my
daughter out of that trip because she was blind--never. There
were times that I held hands with somebody because I was scared,
and we held hands with the children and my mom, but we all did it
on an equal footing. That's what I would like to say about our
family's experiences and the change in my heart and mind; I know
that all things are possible.

Our next panelist is Debbie Day.

Debbie Day: Good morning. I'm the parent of six children.
Two of my sons, Tim and Tom, are both blind and joined our family
by way of adoption. Tim came first. He arrived in 1986 at the age
of three-and-a-half. But even before he arrived, we began
searching for any and all possible resources to help us to raise
a blind child. I am a pretty determined person, and I made
contact with every agency, organization, person, place, or thing
that had anything to do with the blind. When we delved into all
of the literature and spoke with numerous agencies and
organizations for the blind, there was one that stood out. That
was the National Federation of the Blind because it was the NFB
that shared our natural instinct to see blindness not as a
debilitating handicap but merely an inconvenience that makes it
necessary to learn other ways of doing things that we would
typically do by sight. It was the NFB that shared our belief in
this child's abilities and potential and encouraged us to have
strong expectations despite some professionals who had feelings
and comments to the contrary. And it was NFB who challenged and
still challenges our attitudes toward blindness and, by doing so,
helps create in us a stronger and healthier climate in which our
child can grow.

My son Tim is now labeled the miracle child by our state's
Family Consultant for the Blind. I will begin by telling you a
little about Tim. The first three-and-a-half years of his life
were ones of much love but extreme deprivation. There were
virtually no expectations of him, and because he was either held
or kept in a crib at all times, he had little opportunity for
even any accidental learning. Tim arrived at age three-and-a-half
seriously developmentally delayed, non-verbal, non-mobile, and
functioning on a six- to twelve-month level in all areas. But
under the circumstances it wasn't at all surprising.

What did surprise and confuse me were my encounters with
certain professionals working to help the blind. Not only were
their remarks concerning Tim's potential discouraging, but so
were their expectations of the blind population in general. If I
had held their low expectations, Tim would not be where he is
today. Now, four years later at age seven, he is a bright and
out-going boy who just finished his kindergarten year in a
typical class in his neighborhood school. He reads and writes
Braille on a second grade level, and he is a cane traveler.

Yes, Tim has made great gains, but no, he is not a miracle
child. He is a good example of the damage that can be inflicted
on a blind child by not embracing a healthy attitude about
blindness and by allowing so-called professionals to map out your
child's potential in life by their substandard expectations of
the blind. If in fact any miracle did occur, the NFB was
responsible because it was the support, words of encouragement,
and experience we received from NFB members that made the
difference.

Our older son Tom, after spending nine years in many
orphanages overseas and three years in-state, moving from home to
home, joined our family in November of last year. At that time he
was a residential student at the Washington State School for the
Blind and continued there until mid-January, at which time he
transferred to our local school district. Whereas I realize that
some blind individuals have had successful experiences at
residential schools, it was not so in Tom's case. A big area of
contention for us was cane travel. Early on we learned that Tom
was not using a cane on campus, nor was he receiving orientation
and mobility training. Tom was twelve-and-a-half years old. He
had very limited vision. He could not independently cross an
intersection or travel the shortest distance in unfamiliar
territory. He could and did memorize frequently traveled routes
such as the school campus, but he couldn't successfully or
confidently deal with any changes that might occur on those
routes. Knowing that, was it too much to assume that cane travel
and orientation and mobility training would be an important part
of this child's education at a school for the blind? Well, that
was my assumption, but it was not correct. And even more
upsetting to me than the actual loss of independence that this
was inflicting on Tom were the unspoken messages that he was
receiving about his blindness due to their poor attitudes.

No matter whether your child is attending your neighborhood
school or a residential school for the blind, if the program is
inadequate, I am here to tell you you can change it. You are and
must be your child's best advocate. NFB's support, encouragement,
and information are invaluable, but you must be willing to take
up the fight for your child when it is necessary. Go to the
Individual Education Plan workshop later this week. Know what the
laws are. Determine what your child's educational needs are.
Decide what you are willing to compromise on and what you will
stand firm on. Our district now has a very strong program for the
visually impaired, but it wasn't always that way. We started out
with virtually nothing. After two years of constantly assertive
and perhaps sometimes aggressive behavior on my part (if only to
get me off his back) our Special Education Director hired a
specialist for the visually impaired (our very own Federationist
Ruby Ryles); an orientation and mobility instructor; a Braillist;
and two Braille teachers. It can be done.

I might note that, in the five short months that he has been
in our local district after transferring from the School for the
Blind, Tom made great strides in mobility. He receives three
hours of orientation and mobility training per week, and he has
progressed academically two grade levels in nearly all subjects.
Because of the Federation my boys are growing up with strong and
healthy attitudes about their blindness, and they have excellent
role models.

But being involved in adoption issues as well, I am
concerned for those blind children waiting for adoption in the
foster care system here and in orphanages overseas. I'm concerned
about blind adults who face discrimination in the adoption
process, and I am concerned about case workers and adoption
agencies, their misconceptions and their poor attitudes about
blindness. Several months ago Barbara Cheadle asked me to chair
the POBC Network on Blindness and Adoption, and these are the
issues that we deal with. With networks like these, we can change
and are changing what it means to be blind, and I am very happy
to be a part of the National Federation of the Blind. Thank you.

Marty Greiser: I am from Montana and the father of twin
four-year-olds, a boy and a girl. My son Cody is blind, and today
I want to talk a little about our efforts to create an
educational program in a rural school, where no such program has
ever existed.

The old saying about the blind leading the blind has been
around quite a lot longer than most of us. It is certainly
nothing new to the Federation, but in our community and our
school, this phrase just doesn't have a positive meaning. Our son
will be the first blind child ever to go through our school
district, so they really don't know what to do. Our resource
consultant from the state school is ineffective at best; he's
hardly ever there.

Our big problem was finding a teacher. Eventually the school
did come around to the understanding that my son had to learn
Braille and cane travel. They didn't know how they were going to
provide this because there wasn't anyone within one hundred and
fifty miles who could teach Braille, let alone cane travel or
Nemeth Code or slate and stylus or positive attitudes toward
blindness. We didn't know what to do. We were at an impasse. Our
IEP called for Braille instruction. So we called the Federation,
and I talked to Mrs. Cheadle. She said she would see what she
could do.

A few days after that we received a phone call from a woman
in South Dakota who had just graduated with a degree in
elementary education, and she was blind herself. She was looking
for a job, and I thought what a good deal. She had all the skills
we were looking for and some others besides all rolled into one
person. She is a former scholarship winner, by the way, whose
name is Kim Hoffman; and she will be Cody's aide next year in
kindergarten. He will be receiving his Braille instruction, slate
and stylus, and cane travel; and we are anticipating a very
successful elementary program. It looks like we are off to a good
start. She will be at our school next fall, and everything just
seems to be falling into place.

The school was a little reluctant to hire her. There are no
blind people in our community, and they didn't know what to
expect. They asked us questions about how she would do this or
that. I really couldn't answer because I am not an expert on
blindness. Once they interviewed her, they were much relieved
because she could actually talk and seemed very competent.
[Laughter] We are very optimistic, and now the school is too. We
hope that she can stay for a long time, until our son learns how
to read, knowing she will become less and less involved with his
education as he becomes more independent. This provides an
opportunity for her to get her foot in the door as a public
educator. So if anyone is in a similar circumstance, I would
encourage you to contact the NFB or the Job Opportunities for the
Blind program. Anyone in the Parents' Division can help.

These scholarship winners are also a real resource, just
wonderful people. Kim is an excellent role model for our son
since, as I said, there are no other blind people in the
community, and he is very much alone. We think that everything
Kim has to offer, besides her academic skills, is absolutely
essential. I will be sure to let the Parents' Division know how
this experiment turns out. I can't help but think it will be
successful.

Carol Castellano: Thanks, Marty. We will be looking forward
to hearing the next chapter. Our final panelist is Linda Balek.

Linda Balek: I have an eleven-year-old son; he is the red-
headed one. You'll see him; he'll just come right at you.

The
first thing I want you to do as parents when you come to the NFB convention--some
of you are here for the first time--is
to take notes on speakers. Jot down my name; jot down anybody's
name; circle it. Then six months from now, a year, two years,
three years from now, when you're having a problem, it will come
back to your mind that you heard a person talking about something
like it. Call Barbara Cheadle and say, "I need to talk to this or
that person!" That's what I have done. We are talking about
networking. Barbara knows that I have been on the phone; I walk
up to people at these conventions and I say, "What is your phone
number? Someday I think I am going to have to talk to you." I
have talked to them two or three years later, and they don't know
who the hell I am, [Laughter] but they answer my question.
Sometimes we need somebody to say, "Yeah, you're right." We get
a lot of people we talk to on a daily basis in our school system
who say we're wrong, and we need somebody who knows what needs to
be done in the education field, not a professional who went to
school but has no kids. No offense to anybody that's a teacher,
but the majority of my son's teachers have been single women, and
they don't even know how to deal on a personal level with a
child, let alone on our level. So that's why networking is so
important. Belong to your local NFB chapter; that's another
important resource. We call ours a family; we party together; we
fight together; we do everything together like one big family.
It's great to get on the phone with them and say, "I know that
this sounds stupid, but how do you put your shorts on?" That may
be a little elementary--that may not be exactly what I ask--but
ask anything. Get on a family level, so you can talk to blind
people and say what is important. Should your child learn how to
print if he is totally blind? Should he do this or should he do
that? Is this appropriate? Be with the people who can tell you a
lot, and you will learn from them.

Jeff is eleven years old. Last year he spoke to the House
and the Senate in Kansas. We got a Braille bill passed, and now
every child in Kansas has the right to learn Braille. [Applause]
That is something not every state has, and that is something that
is very important to work for.

I want to tell you
just one quick little story because we are running out of time. I talked
to a little girl today. I think
she is ten or eleven years old. She asked me, "What kind of cane
does Jeff have?"

"Well, he has an NFB cane." She wanted to know all about
his cane, and I said to her, "Well, your cane is a little short."

She
said, "The school says that I have to use it."

"Do any of those people who are telling you to use this cane
use one themselves?" I asked.

Her answer was
no. The point is, nobody can tell you how long your cane should be except
a blind person. Nobody can tell
you when you need to learn how to use a slate and stylus except a
blind person. You can get all of these professionals that say you
don't need to learn Braille, but how are you going to read? You
need to talk to blind people to get this information, and the NFB
can help you. Any time you need to talk to somebody, just call
Barbara. You may have questions like "My son wants to learn to
play drums, or my son wants to learn this," and she'll point you
to someone who can help. The NFB isn't here to spoon-feed you. We
are not here to say, "Well, now I'm going to take you over to
this spot, and this will all work out, and this person will do
your job for you." That is not what we are here for. But we are
here to network, and that's what we do. Jeff takes Karate, Jeff
is a drummer, and I mean he plays a whole set of drums, and they
are loud. (We didn't bring them and you are lucky.) But
networking is really what the NFB is about. We as parents needed
that more than anything. To think that you are the only parent in
the world--I think every parent has felt that way.... All of us
have even overlooked our kids' being blind. I felt like I was the
only parent of a blind child in the world. I knew other blind
people, but I never knew other parents of a blind child. I think
that was harder, and that is where the NFB can help.

We are going to have some meetings this evening; they are in
your agenda. You can bring your kids. Come up and sit around and
talk and get some information that way. There will be seminars
this afternoon that can help you. Tom, my husband, is in chairman
of the POBC Technology Committee; we get phone calls from a lot
of other people too. It is a great way to learn and to have
another resource besides the professionals; we all need that.
Thank you.

Carol Castellano: Thanks, Linda. I'd like to conclude this
segment by saying that we will create the future. And if we get
out from under the negative assumptions and the low expectations
and if we bring up our kids to be normal, productive citizens,
then instead of wearing our children's disabilities like
credentials, we can make changes from a position of strength.
Thank you.

JUDE'S KIDS

by Jude Lincicome

From the Associate Editor: Anytime a group of blind adults
begins reminiscing about childhood, the topic of family life,
particularly parents, comes up. We all know what damage guilt-ridden, frightened, or unwise parents can do to a disabled child.
We have also seen--and some of us have been lucky enough to
experience--the miracles of health, satisfaction, and success
that parental love and guidance can work when they are informed
by common sense and an unwavering belief in the capacity of the
child. In the Summer, 1991, issue of Future Reflections, the
quarterly magazine of the Parents of Blind Children Division of
the National Federation of the Blind, the Editor Barbara Cheadle
introduced readers to a remarkable parent. She represents all
that is finest in parents of blind children, and her talk should
be an inspiration to all parents and everyone who works with
disabled children. Here is Barbara Cheadle's introductory note:

When Jude Lincicome came to her first National Federation of
the Blind function with her three preschoolers in tow, everyone
who met her agreed on one thing: she had a great bunch of kids.
Sarah was bright and personable, Danny was cute and polite, and
you could just hear the wheels turning in Jeremy's head as he
took everything in. They were curious and alert, and they
sparkled with the joy of living. The paraphernalia which marked
these kids as physically disabled (motorized wheelchairs, leg
braces, etc.) quickly receded into the background within a few
moments of one's meeting these personable children.

The
woman who can take credit for these lovely children is Jude Lincicome. Currently,
Jude is the single adoptive or foster
parent of seven children, all multiply handicapped and medically
fragile. Right now she has three children at home, including
three-year-old Jeremy, who is blind. (Shortly after Jude gave
this talk, she added one more child to her family.) Jeremy, like
her other children, doesn't have just one disability (blindness).
He was a preemie whose multiple problems began when he was three
days old. He had an intestinal perforation requiring immediate
surgery to remove about a third of the intestine. As a result he
had an ileostomy for many months. Later, he developed a lung
disease (broncho-pulmonary dysplasia and reactive airway disease,
which according to his mother is rather like having continuous
asthma) and suffered intra-ventricular bleeding on both sides of
the brain. As a consequence of the bleeding, Jeremy has mild
cerebral palsy, which has weakened the left side of his body. In
addition to the retinopathy of prematurity (the major cause of
his blindness), he also has glaucoma in his left eye. Of his
development, Jude says, "For a child that was supposed to be a
vegetable all his life [because of the intra-ventricular
bleeding] he's turned out to be pretty much on age level." Eating
was a problem at first because of difficulties caused by the
broncho-pulmonary dysplasia/reactive airway disease/cerebral
palsy combination of conditions. However, Jude and Jeremy
persisted, and today he can scoop with a spoon, feed himself, and
handle a cup independently. Jude also expects Jeremy to master
both cane travel and Braille. He is working on learning his
shapes, loves to read (with his finger) along with Mom as she
reads to him, and knows where to find the page number in a book
(though he can't read it yet). But best of all, Jeremy enjoys
books and looks forward to learning to read. He will soon have a
cane. So far, he is very mobile in his environment--walking to
and from the bus on his own--and loves to run, Jude says. She is
afraid, however, that if he does not get a cane soon, he will
lose this momentum. The professionals have resisted, but Jude is
persistent and is confident that he will have cane instruction
soon.

Busy as she is with her own children, Jude finds time to
advocate for other parents who call on her for information and
advice and also to help find adoptive homes for disabled children
who need a family. Because of her pediatric nursing background
and her practical experience in mothering disabled, medically
fragile children, she is also often called for consultation by
hospital social workers, doctors, and nurses.

The following article is based on a speech Jude gave at a
parents seminar sponsored by the Maryland Parents of Blind
Children Division of the National Federation of the Blind. In it
Jude shares her very personal feelings and philosophy about
raising multiply disabled, medically fragile children. She is
plainspoken with strong opinions and is not afraid to raise
issues that others consider taboo. Now meet Jude and Jeremy:

I will begin by saying that all of my kids are adopted. I'm
working on getting my seventh child, and she will probably be
with us in about a month and a half. All of them have been
multiply handicapped. The little boy sitting next to me is my
most handicapped child right now. When I found him he was totally
unable to do anything. He had never been expected to do anything,
and therefore he didn't. He was thirteen months old, and he could
not hold his head up. He did not swallow; he did not reach for
toys; he did not roll over. His eyes turned toward the bridge of
his nose. His left arm and both legs were paralyzed, and he had
no social smile. That is pretty much the picture of a child who
is a slug. He was literally slimy. He had discharge coming out
everywhere on his body. I guess because of that no one had ever
picked him up and rocked him.

Well, what you see
now before you is a little boy who can count from one to ten (although his
mouth doesn't work too well).
He's extremely polite. Last weekend we had to take him to the
hospital because he was in shunt failure. When the paramedics
left, he was lying there almost unable to breathe, but he said to
them, "Thank you." He's a real special little fellow.

I
wanted to share with you a few ideas about being a parent. I think I can
qualify although I've never had any biological
children. But then I've raised more children than most mothers.
Being a parent of a handicapped child is being an expert when all
the professionals around you think that you're only a mother. You
know your child. You know exactly what your child can and cannot
do. And believe me, it's a whole lot more than anybody else will
want you to believe. I was told that this child here would never
sit up, never sit up! [Jeremy was sitting independently next to
her as she spoke to the group.] I have another little girl out
there who is in a motorized chair, but she can walk. I was told
she would never sit up either, that she would be retarded. She's
very bright. She is going to be mainstreamed as soon as she is
old enough to go to school. She's been walking since she was
about fifteen months old. I had to make her first braces because
no one would let me have any. "She'll never walk," they said.

In
the school system I am the expert at the Admission, Review, and Dismissal
(ARD) team meetings for other children.
Other parents call me and say, "Come with me; I need some help."

The
professionals look at me and say, "Wow, we are lucky to
have this lady here because we can really get some good plans
made for this child." But I go from an ARD meeting for someone
else's child, where I am the expert, into an ARD meeting for my
own child (and the only thing that's changed is that I have eaten
lunch), and I am stupid. I am a mother. I don't know what I am
talking about. My expectations for my child are totally
unrealistic.

Being the parent of a special needs child has a lot of
implications that one would never think of. (When I get finished
with this list, I suspect that you guys will think that I've been
peeking into your house.) You get out of the shower before you're
done, with the soap still on you, because your kid's started to
cry and you have to know what's going on. Or you have to stop
going to the bathroom real quick, right? You have to miss a lot
of work because your kid is sick and nobody else knows how to
take care of him or her.

You and your husband have
planned for a long time to go somewhere, and all of a sudden you can't go
because your kid
doesn't look exactly right or your baby-sitter says, "I'm sorry,
but I have something else I need to do." Everybody else is going,
but you're sitting at home. The friend that you have had all your
life, the one you have shared all your intimate secrets with and
who had so much in common with you--all of a sudden you're
strangers.

You do an awful lot of soul-searching,
an awful lot of self-examination. You feel like you're banging your head
against
a blank wall. You try to figure out what is going on: "I don't
understand this. Why am I so different? Why did all this happen
to me?"

You almost feel that you're growing another part to your
body, and it's shaped like a kid, and it's attached. You can't
get it off. It goes with you when you wash the dishes. It goes
with you into the bathroom. It goes with you to work. Even when
it's not with you, it's there. Right? It invades your thinking,
your planning, your work, your play, your body functions. You now
have something added to your body, to your whole being.

Is it any wonder then that your spouse has no idea what you
look like anymore? Does it stop you from talking to one another
because even he or she doesn't understand? That's a real big
problem, people. We need to keep talking to one another. Talk
about important things. Talk about how you don't like this, how
you're not having very much fun at this party. Believe me, your
spouse isn't having very much fun at this party either.

Here's a biggy--you never thought you'd cry so much in your
life. You have so many tears. Where do they all come from? They
can't possibly come from me. I never cried like this before in my
life! But you know, the tears that you cry are not just tears of
pain. Those tears will also become tears of joy. I have never in
my life experienced the joys that I now know because of my
children. Believe me, I know what the pain is. I had a doctor who
let one of my children die because he wouldn't recognize me as an
expert. So I know the pain.

But being the parent
of a special needs child, a multiply handicapped child, is kind of like the
metamorphosis of a
butterfly. When you first discover that you are the parent of a
special needs child, you feel like a caterpillar. You don't like
to touch yourself. You don't like the way you look. You're sure
you look yucky to everybody else. You feel like that caterpillar.
But the thing is that you're eating up everything. You're
learning everything. You're taking everything in. You're watching
everything. You're probably reading everything you can find,
right? You are slowly but surely making that caterpillar large
and full, and soon it will go into that chrysalis. Something is
going to click in your head, and you'll say, "This wasn't so bad
after all." You look at your child. You've been really, really
working hard, and all of a sudden your child starts to blossom
and meet your expectations and his or her own expectations. The
people around you are doing a pretty good job. Do you know what's
happening to you? You've come out of that cocoon, and you're a
full-blown butterfly. Believe me, you're a whole lot better
person because you've gone through this with your child--this
thing attached to your body--right? Somehow you now know more joy
than anybody else.

Eastern religions have the concept of yin and yang. Has anybody
heard of that? By golly, it is real. Because your pain is so
intense, your ability to feel joy is multiplied ten-fold. That is
the yin yang. Without that pain you would never be able to feel
joy, that euphoria over your kid's reaching for a toy for the
first time. He didn't know it was there, but he had faith that it
was. He was right! Does that bring tears to your eyes? Do you
remember that? I remember that.

It's a very scary world, but it's also a very, very happy
world. The joys that you feel are sparked by the tiniest things.
Once, one of my sons was having difficulty in passing urine. When
he finally had a big diaper full of urine, I was ecstatic! If
anybody had ever told me twenty years ago that I would be
ecstatic over.... Well, it's not something you can tell most of
your friends.

I have a friend who has a child that
was born with no brain. She has a brain stem, so that means the heart beats.
She
breathes. Somehow she can suck a little bit, but even that
ability is going. She is blind and deaf. She doesn't have the
front part of the brain, which would allow her to feel any kind
of pleasure. So she just lies there. That mother said the most
outrageously wonderful thing to me. She said, "Jude, you will
never, never know how blessed I am with this baby. She has taught
me the true meaning of love, of giving, of learning, of
accepting, of cooperating, of communicating." When you come to
think of it, guys, why are we here on this earth? Isn't all of
that it? And she learned that from her child with no brain. How
many of us have ever felt like maybe somebody played a dirty
trick on us? But this lady feels genuinely and thoroughly blessed
with her child, who will never even smile at her; never reach for
her; never give her anything but herself, whatever that is.

We've
been talking about pain, and we've been talking about joy, but there's one
other emotion that's very much present when
you parent a special needs child. It's not one that you need to
keep around. You need to keep joy around for obvious reasons. You
need to keep pain around, too, because without the pain you can't
know the joy. But guilt is a very, very destructive emotion. It
serves absolutely no purpose. But for some reason we human beings
think we need to tuck it into our pockets, keep it, and treasure
it. We think, "I must have done something for this to have
happened. My husband has to have done something to make this
happen. It's in my genes. God must be punishing me." Did you ever
think any of those things? In the soul searching and the
self-examination that I talked about before, somehow you don't
come up with, "Wow, were you ever a neat lady!" or "Wow, you are
some super man." You come up with, "I must have done something
wrong." These feelings can be very damaging, especially in the
way they affect your child, because if you are guilty of
something, then you have somehow to make it all right. You end up
making it all right by saying, "Oh, isn't he cute? Don't make him
do that, he's crying. He doesn't want to do that today. Oh, go
get it for him. Look at him. He's trying so hard." That attitude,
ladies and gentlemen, is the one thing that will kill your
child's chances. He or she will begin to think that this world
owes him or her something, but this world does not owe any of us
anything. It will never give us anything that we don't take for
ourselves.

So take the guilt that you have. Look at it. Examine it. Do
whatever it is that you need to in order to understand it, and
then throw it in the trash because that's where it belongs. To
begin with, it doesn't make any difference whose fault it was or
whether it was anybody's fault. Here you are. It is you and your
child. The only way your child is going to perform those miracles
that I know you can help him or her to is for you to accept
yourself and accept your child for whatever and whoever you both
are. I've performed three miracles so far, and I'm about ready
for a fourth one. She's coming to live with us soon.

DISTINGUISHED EDUCATOR OF BLIND CHILDREN AWARD FOR 1992

by
Sharon Maneki

Sharon Maneki is President of the National Federation of the
Blind of Maryland. She also chairs the committee to select the
Distinguished Educator of Blind Children for 1992.

The National Federation of the Blind will recognize an
outstanding teacher of blind children at our 1992 convention June
29 to July 5, in Charlotte, North Carolina. The winner of this
award will receive an expense-paid trip to the convention, a
check for $500, an appropriate plaque at the banquet, and an
opportunity to make a presentation about the education of blind
children to the National Federation of the Blind Parents of Blind
Children Division early in the convention.

Anyone who is currently teaching or counseling blind
children or administering a program for blind children is
eligible to receive this award. It is not necessary to be a
member of the National Federation of the Blind to apply. However,
the winner must attend the National Convention. Teachers may be
nominated by colleagues, supervisors, or friends. The letter of
nomination should explain why the teacher is being recommended
for this award.

The nominee must meet two additional requirements: write a
one-page letter describing his or her beliefs and approach to
teaching, and answer the following ten questions:

1. List your degrees, the institutions from which they were
received, and your major area or areas of study.

2. How long and in what programs have you taught blind
children?

3. In what setting do you teach? (Example: classroom in
school for the blind, special education classroom, itinerant
program, etc.)

4. How many students do you teach regularly this year? What
subjects do you teach?

5. How many of your students read and write primarily using:
a) Braille, b) large print, c) closed-circuit television, d)
recorded materials, e) small print?

6. How many of your students use both print and Braille?
7. At what age do you recommend that your students begin: a)
reading Braille, b) writing with a slate and stylus, c) writing
with a Braille writer?

8. At what age do you recommend that your students begin to
learn independent cane travel?

9. How do you determine which children should learn cane
travel and which should not?

10. a) At what age do you recommend that students begin
typing? b) When do you expect them to be able to hand in typed
assignments?

The education of blind children is one of our most important
concerns. Attendance at a National Federation of the Blind
convention will enrich a teacher's experience by affording the
opportunity to meet other teachers who work with blind children,
to meet parents, and to meet blind adults who have had
experiences in a variety of educational programs. Help us
recognize a distinguished teacher by distributing this
announcement and encouraging teachers to submit their
applications. We are pleased to offer this award and look forward
to nominations from many well-qualified educators.

THE BLIND EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR AWARD FOR 1992

by Stephen O. Benson

From the Associate Editor: Steve Benson is a member of the
Board of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind and
President of the NFB of Illinois. He also serves as the chair of
the selection committee which annually chooses the NFB's Blind
Educator of the Year. Here is his important notice:

The National Federation of the Blind was founded by an
outstanding scholar and teacher, whose influence upon us as
individuals and as an organization has never stopped. Jacobus
tenBroek took seriously his responsibility as a teacher. He
understood the impact of his actions and those of the organized
blind movement on future generations of Americans, blind and
sighted alike.

Dr. Jernigan, too, has always been acutely aware of the
consequences of his teachings and of the actions of The National
Federation of the Blind. No one else in work with the blind has
compiled a body of writing that has had comparable influence on
thought and action in this field.

President Maurer, while not a credentialed educator himself,
has received his training as a teacher from Dr. Jernigan directly
and from studying the writings of Dr. tenBroek. He understands
and appreciates the heritage that has been passed, teacher to
student, down the generations to him and to all of us in the
Federation.

As an educational organization, the National Federation of
the Blind is dedicated to improving the lives of all blind
people. Among those who have been affected profoundly by the
thought and actions of the NFB are blind teachers. We have worked
hard to open this profession to able, qualified teachers who
happen to be blind. Many of these teachers have responded to the
challenge of the classroom with style and aplomb.

Several years ago the Blind Educator of the Year Award was
established by the National Association of Blind Educators (the
teachers division of the National Federation of the Blind) to pay
tribute to individual teachers whose outstanding classroom
performance, distinguished community service, and active
commitment to the NFB merited national recognition. Beginning
with the 1991 presentation, this award became, not an honor
bestowed by a single division of the organized blind movement,
but an honor presented by the entire national body. This change
reflects our recognition of the importance of good teaching on
all of us.

The Blind Educator of the Year Award is presented at the
annual banquet of the National Federation of the Blind. Honorees,
who must be present at the NFB's National Convention and at the
banquet, receive an appropriately inscribed plaque and a check
for $500.

The members of the committee which will select the 1992
Blind Educator of the Year are Steve Benson, chairman, Illinois;
Patricia Munson, California; Homer Page, Colorado; Judy Sanders,
Minnesota; and Adelmo Vigil, New Mexico. Nominations should be
sent to Steve Benson, 3032 N. Albany Avenue, Chicago, Illinois
60618. Letters of nomination must be accompanied by a current
resume and supporting documentation of community and Federation
activity. All nomination materials must be in the hands of the
committee chairman by April 30, 1992, to be considered for this
year's award.

OF BLINDNESS, ATTITUDES, REHABILITATION, AND SOCIETY

by Mike Freeman

From the Associate Editor: Mike Freeman is the first vice
president of the National Federation of the Blind of Washington.
Last winter, the Freemans adopted daughter arrived from India.
When one becomes the parent of a blind child, one thinks a lot
about the role of rehabilitation professionals in the lives and
successful adjustments of the blind people who come in contact
with them. Here are some of Mike Freeman's thoughts on the
subject:

Two attitudes toward blindness prevail in society today. One
holds that blindness is an unmitigated tragedy. It causes
cognitive, psychological, and social deficits and personality
disorders which render the blind incapable of competing with the
sighted on an equal basis. In order to compensate for the tragic
loss of vision, the blind possess heightened sensory awareness,
extra talents or gifts, and unusual insight. Finally, this view
holds that the suffering of the blind due to their affliction may
be alleviated, if only to a small degree, by the provision of
palliatives such as recreational activities and special
privileges.

The other attitude holds that, with training and
opportunity, blindness can be reduced to the level of a physical
nuisance; that the blind are simply normal people who cannot see;
that the problems they face are not due to the physical
disability of blindness, but rather to the misconceptions held by
the public and the blind themselves; and that the blind are
capable of competing on terms of equality with the sighted. This
attitude forms the core of the philosophy of the National
Federation of the Blind, and it is espoused by an increasing
proportion of the public, the blind, and rehabilitation
personnel. Nevertheless, the attitude that blindness means
tragedy and helplessness is still distressingly prevalent in
society in general and in the rehabilitation system in
particular. Often rehabilitation personnel blame case failures on
the supposed incompetence of the blind or on the psychological
and social problems which are supposedly inherent in blindness,
ignoring the difficulties caused by the prevailing psychological
and social climate in our society. Let us examine how this
climate affects the rehabilitation process.

The all-pervasive message that blindness means helplessness
and inferiority is conveyed to blind people in both obvious and
subtle ways. We face blatant discrimination when seeking
employment, and we are often treated like small children when
traveling by air or frequenting restaurants and other facilities.
When we are accompanied by the sighted, people ignore us and
direct questions to the sighted friend or family member. We are
often presumed incapable of walking great distances, climbing
stairs, or mastering skills such as cooking, personal care,
independent travel, and Braille--incapable, that is, without
prodigious effort and the intervention of instructors possessing
extremely specialized and arcane knowledge.

At
the same time, pressure is brought to bear upon us to accept special privileges
such as two-for-one bus fares and
handicapped seating or parking facilities, despite the fact that
we do not need or, increasingly, want such benefits. Such
privileges have a price: they identify the blind person as
abnormal, not subject to the same conditions and rules as others
in society. This notion of the blind as abnormal is often
accentuated when people view as exceptional or miraculous
accomplishments by the blind which would be considered routine
for the sighted. But blind people are also stamped as abnormal
when their accomplishments are attributed to special gifts rather
than talents and capacities having nothing to do with blindness.
Perhaps the strongest and subtlest indication of society's
conviction that the blind are by and large inferior is conveyed
by the connotations of the word "blind": blindness equals lack of
reason, as in "a blind rage" or "blind faith"; blindness equals a
dead end, as in "a blind alley"; blindness equals senselessness
or stupidity, as in "blind drunk," etc.

Bombarded by these manifestations of society's attitudes
about blindness, it is not surprising that the blind
rehabilitation client tends to adopt these attitudes about
himself or herself. Under these conditions, rehabilitation
becomes difficult, if not impossible, for its goal is the
independence of the blind client and his or her integration into
society. This cannot be accomplished as long as the client feels
himself or herself unworthy or unable to participate in society
as a first-class citizen.

How can rehabilitation personnel counteract the pernicious
effects of society's negative stereotypes about blindness? First
and foremost, they must believe in the normality and capabilities
of the blind. They must believe that the blind are capable of
integration into society and that blindness need not keep the
client from achieving a useful and productive life. In other
words, rehabilitation personnel must root out their own
prejudices concerning blindness, for only then can they hope to
convey to their blind clients the positive attitudes that will
enable them to compete successfully.

Second, as a consequence of this positive attitude toward
blindness, rehabilitation personnel must let the normal
mechanisms of competition in society have free rein. Clients
should be allowed to succeed or fail by normal standards, without
their interference. For example, clients who wish to attend
institutions of higher learning should be allowed to do so
without prejudgment by rehabilitation personnel about their
fitness. Once in school, these clients should be allowed and
expected to succeed or fail just like other students. This
entails some risk for the rehabilitation counselor because there
will undoubtedly be failures as well as successes. Nevertheless,
the gains (confident, self-assured blind citizens) are worth the
risk.

Third, rehabilitation personnel should not assume that all
blind clients need psychological counseling or evaluation. To be
sure, there are eccentrics and misfits among the blind just as
there are among the sighted. We are equally likely to be peculiar
or eccentric. But counselors should not feel constrained from
pointing out to clients the ways in which their behavior affects,
say, their attempts to find employment. Nor does it mean that
antisocial behavior should be tolerated. It does mean that
rehabilitation personnel should treat blind clients with respect
and should view psychological intervention as appropriate only
when they would recommend it for the sighted.

Fourth, the rehabilitation counselor should warn blind
clients about the prejudice and discrimination they will face.
They must have the chance to develop the self-confidence to deal
with these challenges to their self-esteem. They have the right
to be informed about the National Federation of the Blind as well
as other consumer organizations. Such groups can be of immense
value in helping blind people realize that the real problem of
blindness is not the physical disability but the prejudices of
society.

The foregoing can be summarized in one sentence: The
rehabilitation counselor must believe that it is respectable to
be blind. In doing so, he or she will imbue clients with that
belief and thus equip them to cope with the continuing adventure
that is life.

BLINDNESS: FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF CHILDREN

by Lauren L. Eckery

From the Associate Editor: Lauren Eckery is a contributing
editor for News from Blind Nebraskans, the publication of the
National Federation of the Blind of Nebraska. This article was
first printed in the Fall, 1990 edition of that newsletter and
reprinted in the July/August, 1991, issue of the Braille
Examiner, the publication of the NFB of Illinois. Lauren Eckery
has often shared with readers her reflections about her
thoughtful and sensitive interactions with children. Here is
another chapter:

We have said many times throughout the years that children
are the hope for the future of the National Federation of the
Blind. We do not limit our hope to blind children, since sighted
children will also grow up either to help or to hinder our cause
as we progress. The children who will help us most will be those
who have learned early in life to recognize the real issues
surrounding blindness. If they carry this knowledge with them for
the rest of their lives and put it into useful practice, they
will stand beside us, constantly aware and totally convinced that
sight is not everything.

We often speak, particularly among ourselves, of the many
incidents in our lives which reek of unintended discrimination
against the blind and of the ways in which these words and
actions bother us. I think it is important that we do this.
Discrimination and oppression are an integral part of our
reality.

However, our hope and enthusiasm in our Federation work and
play can be greatly enhanced by the wisdom and humor which come
from children who have given our blindness a second thought. I
have shared examples of this nature with you in the past. I have
some more recent examples, which I would now like to share with
you.

Not long ago I was walking home from work,
traveling up Webster Street. I heard the squeals and the roar of several
small
children in joyful play with their wagons, cars, Big Wheels, and
tricycles. They were playing on the sidewalk. Suddenly, I heard a
mother's shriek of terror, "Watch out! Take those toys off the
sidewalk right now so she won't trip over them!" It sounded like
a matter of life and death. As I continued walking toward the
children, I heard them scurry to remove their toys from the
sidewalk.

One little boy didn't make it. As he
was tugging away at his
vehicle, I approached him, saying "Hi" to him as I quickly
maneuvered around him and his vehicle by using my long white
cane.
Immediately he asked, "What's that?" As I explained to him
how and why I used my cane, I discovered other toys still on the
sidewalk. I remarked to him that it might be a good idea to take
the rest of the toys off the sidewalk since somebody might come
along and trip over them. I was astonished by his response.

"But you finded 'em." Obviously
he saw no need for panic since he had just witnessed a demonstration that
one did not have
to see to find the toys on the sidewalk.

Then there is my daughter Lynden. She seems to go through
phases of pretending her father and I are not really blind; being
angry about our blindness, complete with insulting behavior; and
occasionally being unusually realistic about our blindness.

One
day this past winter, when I was ill, Lynden wanted one of her school papers
signed. My signature guide was not easily at
hand. Neither of us wanted to go get it. In the past, in a
situation like this, Lynden might have said, "Why can't I just
sign it for you?" I have explained to her that this is never a
good idea. As her mother, I can and will sign anything needing a
parent's signature. Her father will do the same. On this
particular day, Lynden left the room, busying herself in some
mysterious activity. Returning, she presented me with a paper
signature guide which she had fashioned herself. The accuracy of
the shaping of this guide assured me that she had indeed noticed
and accepted the tool I have used all these years to facilitate
the independent signing of my name. This was not an act of shame
and anger, but one of consideration, love, and respect.

Finally, I would like to share a poem which Lynden wrote.
Her third-grade class was given an assignment to write a poem
about the color green. Each poem was placed on a large green
paper shamrock for St. Patrick's Day.

Most of the references to color I hear from sighted people
come in predominantly visual terms. Although green is not
Lynden's favorite color, I think her description of green, with
its inclusion of other bodily senses--the good, the bad, and the
fun of life--demonstrates an open, wholesome, and healthy
perspective on the color green. With Lynden's permission, it is
with a mother's pride and with an editor's pleasure that I now
share this poem:

Green
by Lynden Eckery (Spring, 1990)

Green is Spring
And a four-leaf clover,
And the feeling of running.
Green is the taste of mints.
Grass and fresh air smell green.
Green is the sound of a bird and a cricket.
Mouldy bread and a headache are green.
Green is camping.
--The End

******************************

If you or a friend would like to remember the National
Federation of the Blind in your will, you can do so by employing
the following language:

"I give, devise, and bequeath unto National Federation of
the Blind, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21230, a
District of Columbia nonprofit corporation, the sum of $_____ (or
"_____ percent of my net estate" or "The following stocks and
bonds: _____") to be used for its worthy purposes on behalf of
blind persons."

******************************

SIGHT UNSEEN

by Dr. Elizabeth Browne

From the Associate Editor: Dr. Browne has appeared in these
pages before. This article was first printed in the July/August,
1991 issue of the Blind Examiner, the publication of the National
Federation of the Blind of Illinois. It proves again that every
sound rule has an exception. Here it is:

"To be or not to be." That is indeed the question.
Whether
to note one's blindness in writing when applying for employment
or not has troubled many people with various disabilities for far
too long. This dilemma has, pardon the expression, dogged me for
many years. As I have searched for teaching positions in various
local colleges and universities, my practice has always been to
let the quality of my credentials speak for me.

But last year something remarkable occurred when I found
myself once more searching for openings in local colleges and
universities. Having recently been first woman out when the
Chicago Archdiocese began facing its financial problems
(reduction in force--RIF, it was called), I began by flooding the
market with resumes and letters of inquiry and following up with
endless phone calls to countless local colleges and universities.
The summer wore on, and I was wearing out.

Let me explain. Contracts are usually signed, sealed, and
confirmed early in the new academic year, February or March at
the very latest. In this surprising case the archdiocese had
notified me far too late for me to search for anything with any
substance at all. I was doomed to take any left-over position
wherever I might find one.

As the fall semester drew near, I had determined to resign
myself to the obvious fact that all positions were full and I
should set about completing an extra degree I had been working on
for a long time.

The week before classes were to
begin, I received a phone call from the chair of the English department at
Mundelein
College, and she said, "I have your resume in front of me and
just happened to notice how well-suited you are for our
particular department's needs."

I listened,
thinking sarcastic thoughts to myself, "Of
course I am!" I muttered to myself. "It's about time somebody
noticed." The summer search had been long, and interviews
apparently fruitless.

Well, with many apologies
for the short notice, the voice offered me a couple of classes, starting
in five days. "Will you
come aboard? We'd sure like to have you with us." But I had
decided to complete yet another degree to make me more
academically desirable than ever, so that, when I was turned down
somewhere by someone again, they might at least pause and
consider what they were losing.

I said, "I'm not interested." I have decided to forego the
joy of part-time teaching for this term." Then it happened.
"You'd be doing me a big favor, and I wouldn't forget it. Please
say yes. You'd like our department, and the college is really a
great place to work."

After several phone calls
and deep soul-searching, I agreed, and then the following incredible thing
happened. "I haven't time
to interview you properly because of all the last-minute details,
so I'll meet you after your first class next week, and we can
have a cup of coffee together, get to know each other a little.
Your contract, office key, and library card will be at the front
desk. Just pop in and pick them up, and everyone will be saying,
"Hi" to you because I told them you were coming. I knew you would
accept." And she hung up.

I was stunned. I remember Rami Rabbi's book, Take Charge,
which advised job seekers not to surprise a prospective employer
by not telling him or her that you are blind. That's a bad start.
I returned to the phone and tried to track her down in order to
insist on an interview.

"Why?" she said, "I already know you from reading your
excellent credentials. We'll have coffee after your first class
when I will have a little time to chat about this and that." And
again she hung up.

I agreed with her. My qualifications, my credentials are
good. These are the basic reasons to hire someone for a job. But
I could not forget that advice about not surprising your
potential employer or, in my case, chair of the department. Once
more I phoned, trying to break the news to her.

"Would it be okay if I dropped in and walked about the
campus, getting used to it, so my dog, guide dog (I emphasized
the word dog), would be accustomed to it? Would that be all
right?" I had pictures of chairpersons hiding behind their
secretaries, whispering that they were gone for the day, when I
surprised them in their offices, and I was trying to avoid the
chaos.

"I just want my guide dog-like Seeing Eye dog, to get used
to the building." I said and she calmly responded, "Oh, you have
a dog. Won't that be wonderful to have a dog on campus. I'll be
so glad to meet both of you after your first class. See you on
Tuesday." So, I retrieved the contract, signed it, wandered about
meeting very friendly people, and then set about to get at least
a few chapters of the texts taped.

Tuesday, after
a long morning class, I emerged into the hallway outside my room and found
the chair of the department
waiting for me so we could have coffee together. "How was your
first class? By the way, the dog is lovely. Welcome to both of
you."

This is the way it should be. When one is prepared,
qualified, capable, there should be no taint of stereotyping or
prejudice. For the first time I had been hired sight unseen. I
had dreamed of this miracle often, and now I have lived to tell
the tale.

Postscript: Mundelein College has just been affiliated with
its much larger neighbor, Loyola University, and I again set
forth hoping the next department chair will display similar traits.

WITHOUT HOPE
Life in the Settlement for the Blind

by Inna Cazpovich

From the Associate Editor: The following article is
reprinted from a periodical entitled Soviet Youth. It was
translated from the Russian by Eugene Soldatjonok. It is a grim
reminder of how far the blind of the United States have come.
Here it is:

In this dormitory at 14 Pales Street everything is typical
of such Soviet institutions. The only shower is closed because of
cosmetic repairs to the building, which last for several months.
There is one bathroom in the whole building; it is in such
condition that for a weak, nervous person it is better to stay
away. Especially sensitive ones wash themselves at the toilet
under the faucet. (There are several taps!)

It is unusual in this uncomfortable building that people
living here do not see this whole nightmare. It is not surprising
that they don't notice because the inhabitants are blind. That is
why they are forgotten as people. All of them are from Latvia.
They abandoned their flats and moved to the settlement for the
blind in Riga because only at the settlement could they find any
occupation. Edite fell ill when she was graduating from a medical
institute. With nearly lost sight, she was treated for an
illness, sitting at home for three years, and then she decided to
move here with hope to obtain work. Now she is assembling
folders.

"It seems we must be grateful for this," says Edite. "Who
needs us at all?"

Edite told us about difficulties when three of them live in
one room and about queues for the kitchen, which cannot
accommodate everyone who wants to use it. People without sight
cook for themselves. There is a restaurant at the enterprise, but
it does not work on the weekends.

Laima and Peters,
a young couple, explain that the building they live in was intended for a
workshop, and it is not adaptable
for living. The couple has a baby; there are swaddling clothes
hanging everywhere in the room. They complain of a mode of life,
but I'm withholding their intonation: "We shall live here
eternally. We shall not have anything in our life anymore." They
are deprived of any right to get a desirable education. They will
have a right to be listed in the queue for a flat only after ten
years of living in this dreadful hostel. At least able-bodied
persons could change their destiny somehow.

Iren has lived all her short life in these state homes. She
did well in her eight years of boarding school, but she didn't
manage to enter the pedagogic college. Now she is living at the
hostel and assembles brushes. She will have to wait the ten years
to be listed for a flat, doing this, and she will then have a
flat with a pension. What is the use of a flat to an old blind
woman? Maybe it is easier to be wait-listed to the home of the
old ones at once. Iren's brother is eight years old. He does not
see as well as his sister does. Now he learns at the common
school because a kind teacher has agreed to take trouble with
him. But his future will be boarding school and a hostel, too. It
is good that this happy blond boy does not know this yet.

"We don't want to live," says Edite. "There
is no way out,
even if you smash your head against the wall."

They propose to Edite to apply to live in a home for old
people. There are bedrooms for two, common nutrition, and
nursing; but this will be forever. They will never have a right
to a flat. Old age pensioners who cannot care for themselves at
all live there. The rest prefer to hope, a small belief in a
miracle--all of a sudden the rest of the people will think about
unhappier ones and will change severe laws. And one day society
will recognize that it needs the hands, the minds, and the
knowledge of those of us who are not in the mainstream so far.

Remember the disabled ones, you powerful ones! Recall that
illness does not have mercy, neither to the poor nor to the rich
ones. All are equal in this sense. Trouble could come at any
hour.

THE COMMITTEE ON ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY

by Curtis Chong

From the Associate Editor: Sunday afternoon, June 30, 1991,
the Job Opportunities for the Blind (JOB) Program conducted its
annual seminar for blind job-seekers. A number of speakers
presented valuable information about specific professions and
general strategies in the job search, and a large and
enthusiastic audience took careful note and asked pointed
questions.

Curtis Chong, first vice president of the National
Federation of the Blind of Minnesota, made a brief presentation
of particular interest to many people. Lorraine Rovig, Director
of the JOB Program, introduced him like this:

Lorraine Rovig: Money. Money. Money. How can I afford to buy
adaptive equipment? Here's the man who knows quite a bit about
how to answer that question, Curtis Chong from Minnesota. He is
the President of the NFB in Computer Science, a division of the
National Federation of the Blind, and the JOB computer
consultant. When I get a question that's too tough for me, he's
my man. When you get around to buying your own equipment, money
is the big question. You know, once you get past--which one do I
want and where is it? If you go to a bank and buy something to
help you succeed in your business or your profession, quite a bit
is charged for the money they give you. The NFB looked at the
problem, and we raised some funds. We have a three-percent loan
program available for purchasing adaptive aids. Curtis will tell
us something about that. He chairs the NFB's Committee on
Assistive Technology (COAT). Take it away, Curtis Chong.

Curtis Chong: I'm so glad you guys are awake. You know how
hard it is to talk to an afternoon crowd! One time I went to a
school and tried to talk to a class of kids, and they all fell
asleep. As Lorraine Rovig said, the National Federation of the
Blind has established a Committee on Assistive Technology. There
are three people on that committee, Jim Willows, E. U. Parker,
and me. The purpose of that committee is to make low-interest
loans available for blind people who need computers or related
special technology to help them enhance their jobs or advance
their educations or simply to improve the quality of their lives.

This
is, as I have repeated many, many times over the phone to a lot of people
who have called me, not a grant program.
Somewhere down the line, somebody is going to come down on you
and collect, but if you understand that, from my point of view it
is a wonderful thing. After all, what does it really mean? It
means you then rely on your own resources to have the equipment
that you need, and you ultimately own it. It is yours to keep,
and no rehabilitation counselor on the face of this earth is
going to take it away from you. So realistically, what am I
talking about? Some people have come to me and said I'd like to
buy a 386 SX 33 megahertz computer. I want to buy an Arkenstone
reader, a Braille embosser and a printer, a modem, a CD ROM disk
drive and library; and all that's going to cost--oh--maybe about
$13,000. I unfortunately have to say to these people, "You're
asking for a system that I would dearly love to have but can't
afford myself." What we are in a position to do through the
Committee on Assistive Technology is to make loans available,
probably around $4,000 to $5,000. That'll get you one Arkenstone,
but no computer, so alone it's useless. It'll get you a Romeo
Braille Embosser, but again no computer. It would get you a laser
printer and a computer but no Braille embosser or one of the
following: an Arkenstone or a CD ROM drive or a modem. It can get
you a computer and a print printer and maybe a Braille Blazer and
maybe a Braille'n Speak, if you shop around so that you can get
yourself a fairly decent system.

We can loan you
money. We prefer that people be prepared when they borrow to pay at least
$50 a month. Realistically,
you'll probably wind up paying more than that because we'd like
to have the loans paid off in three years, although when I say
these numbers, I want you to know that I'm only giving you
guidelines, which are like rules, always capable of being broken.
We want to be flexible. If a person says, "My job is on the line,
and I've got to have a computer," I'm not going to say, "No, we
can't let you have it." You know, if we have the resources and
the need is there, we're going to try to make it work.

So let me give you some rough figures. here's how we would
like the process to work. If you think that you need some
equipment, the first thing you should do is the research and find
out exactly what you need. Part of that research could be calling
up some of the people in the National Federation of the Blind who
know about this technology, including me. I'd be glad to provide
some advice. There are other people in the Federation such as
Steve Jacobson, who is a member of the Computer Science Division,
or Jim Willows or Dr. T.B. Cranmer. There are a lot of folks you
can call to get advice about how or what you should buy.

Once you've decided that, and assuming that it's not a
horrendously large amount of money--say $10,000--you can call me
(at the end I'll give you my phone number), and I will send you a
packet, including an application form which asks about as many
embarrassing questions as a bank would. We want to know if you're
paying alimony or child support, if you've ever been declared
bankrupt, and if there is a court action against you. We will
want to know what your income is, what your bills are, what sort
of debt situation you have. But in all fairness I will say that
we tend to be more generous than a bank in determining whether
you qualify.

For example, people will assume that, if their only income
is SSI, they automatically won't qualify. That is not true. If
your income is SSI but your loan payments are relatively small,
when compared to your overall income, you might well qualify for
this program. There is a technology inventory form that we will
ask you to fill out, which lists the items you want to buy, the
prices, and the vendors, so that we can find out if those people
intend to sell you something decent, particularly in the
assistive technology area. If you're thinking about buying a
screen reader, we don't want some local salesman to lure you into
buying something that we know is not going to work. We will tell
you that and warn you that what you're buying will probably not
work.

There is also some information in the packet that tells you
what your payments might be. Let me give you some idea about what
we're talking about, bearing in mind that we will, for the most
part, ask you to pay at least $50 a month. So, before you get
yourself in debt, let me tell you what your payments might look
like. If you borrowed $1,000 for one year, your payments would be
$84.69 a month; for two years, $42; for three years, $29; for
four years, $22; and for five years, $17. If you borrow $3,000
for one year, you'll probably pay roughly $254 per month. For two
years it would be $128; for three years, $87; for four years $66;
and for five years, $53. If you borrow five thousand, a one-year
loan will cost you roughly $423 per month--that's almost like
paying a mortgage. It would be $214 for two years, $145 for
three, $110 a month for four, and $89 a month for a five-year-loan. So if you stay with our three-year guideline and if you
borrowed $5,000, you'd have to pay $145 a month.

That's roughly what loans of various amounts will cost you,
and as I say, we do supply you with a chart to show you about
what you would pay so you can decide if, in fact, you really want
to go into debt for that amount.

If you are looking for some grant assistance, we don't have
that. However, I'm given to understand that Easter Seals
Foundation may make some PC stuff available at a discount
although I don't know what kind of hoops they make you go
through. And, of course, in extremes you can always go back to
the rehabilitation system. They have been sort of generous
sometimes; sometimes, I say that advisedly--almost to a fault
sometimes, and very meager in other cases. But that's another
possibility.

So if you want to talk with me, I will be at this entire
convention, but I want to discuss your plans with you before
giving you an application packet. After the convention, if you
want to get hold of me, my address is 3530 Dupont Avenue North,
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55412, or I'm listed in the phone book
under Curtis Chong. My number is (612) 521-3202. That's my home
number. Please don't call me at work. I'll be glad to call you
anytime in the evening.

THE COMMITTEE ON THE BLIND MULTIPLY HANDICAPPED CHILD: WHAT IS IT AND WHAT DOES IT DO?

by Colleen Roth

From the Associate Editor: The Summer, 1991, issue of Future
Reflections, the quarterly magazine published by the Parents of
Blind Children Division of the National Federation of the Blind,
included a short report on the work of the Division's Committee
on the Blind Multiply Handicapped Child. The work that this
committee is doing has been growing rapidly, and since there may
well be interested professionals and family members who need this
information and since all blind people should know about the work
of this committee, we are reprinting the article. Here it is:

The focus of the Committee on the Blind Multiply Handicapped
Child is blind children and adults with an additional disability,
which can be physical or mental. Individuals in this group range
from those with above-average intelligence and a physical
disability to those with profound mental retardation in addition
to blindness. We share information with families and
professionals who work with this special population. In general
we find that blindness is not the primary disability when mental
retardation or other developmental disabilities are involved.

We circulate a periodic update, which is sent to all the
families and professionals who have requested information, and we
continue to prepare new materials that these families and
educators need. We currently have three hundred twenty-five
families and professionals on our mailing list.

We also network families and professionals with others
coping with similar situations. We get the information we need to
match people by sending questionnaires. Each family that has
requested information is sent a questionnaire which helps to
determine the child or adult's functional level, age, and medical
diagnosis and the areas in which the child or adult needs
assistance. The responding individual can also indicate whether
the family or care-giver wishes to network. A separate
questionnaire is sent to professionals asking them about the
settings in which they work and the population they serve. We
also ask whether or not they wish to network with other
professionals. All information received is confidential. Only the
name, address, and a brief description of common characteristics
are sent to those we match for networking.

The
rest (making contact and determining how much and what kind of information
to share) is left up to the network pair. So
far we have matched fifty-two families and seventy-two
professionals. We also circulate a Braille Monitor article
entitled "Education of the Blind Mentally Retarded Child," a toy
resource list (toys are selected on the basis of a child's mental
age), and two articles on feeding. We have had several requests
for information on dealing with self-injury, so we now have order
forms for a pamphlet on this topic, published by the Institute
for Disabilities Studies, University of Minnesota. If you are
interested in receiving this booklet, please write to us for the
order form, and we will be glad to send one to you.

Mrs. Ruth Van Ettinger serves as co-chair of the Parents of
Blind Children Division's Committee on the Blind Multiply
Handicapped Child. Her area of expertise and interest is higher
functioning blind and otherwise disabled children. She will be
corresponding with those who have an interest in these
youngsters. She will also contribute material to the update and
other mailings

If you wish to receive the update or any of the articles
listed here or if you are interested in our committee network,
please write to Mrs. Colleen Roth, Co-chair, POBC Committee on
the Blind Multiply Handicapped Child, 1912 Tracy Road, Northwood,
Ohio 43619, or call (419) 666-6212.

Requests for all items, including information about higher
functioning blind children, should be sent to Colleen Roth at the
Northwood address. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or
comments for the update, please submit them in writing.

If you copy or pass on our materials to others, please be
sure that the name and address of our committee is included so
that those who get it know how to contact us directly for more
help and information.

Please spread the word about this committee and network!
Your support and involvement are vital to our committee's growth
and effectiveness.

EXERCISING SELF-RESPECT

by William D. Meeker

From the Associate Editor: Bill Meeker is one of the leaders
of the National Federation of the Blind of Wisconsin. This
article first appeared in the Fall/Winter, 1991, edition of the
Wisconsin Chronicle, the publication of the NFB of Wisconsin.
Here it is:

The staff at the gym where I exercise attempt to lessen the
boredom inherent in using the exercycle and rowing machine with a
color TV in the workout area. One and a half years of rowing have
given me not only additional muscle tissue, but also much
tolerance for what spews out of the television between four and
five p.m. week days. Sometimes I even become interested. One
Wednesday last May was such a day.

I was proceeding
under full steam using the rowing machine on an imaginary crossing of Lake
Michigan (a contest sponsored by
the health club), with what remained of my consciousness fixed on "Family Feud." This was a particularly good episode--a grudge
match between Operation Desert Storm veterans, the Army versus
the Air Force. About fifteen minutes into the show my attention
was riveted and my interest was peaking, when some jerk changed
the channel to that paragon of media circuses, "The Donahue
Show." This had happened before--what rudeness, to change the TV
channel without asking others in the room if they cared! There
had been times when I remained silent at this behavior and burned
my anger, but today I spoke up. "I was watching that show. Would
you mind turning it back?"

"Ha!" barked
the person astride the life cycle to my right. Phil Donahue remained on the
screen.

What was funny? Maybe he thought that, since blind people
can't see, we don't watch TV. I remembered that single bark of
laughter from once before when I spoke up.

I stopped
rowing, stood up, and, cane in hand, approached Phil (the TV). My fellow
exercisers became silent. It was the
stunned silence of those watching an infidel approaching an altar
with clearly desecratory intent. I found the channel select
button and flipped back to "Family Feud." Okay, back to the trip
across Lake Michigan with the Air Force ahead of the Army. No
comment from the exercise room.

Time passed.

I thought about what had just
happened. Well, they now know that a blind person can not only watch
TV but also change the
channel and get angry at impoliteness. I felt at peace because I
had done all that one person could do. The incident was resolved,
and it could now slide into the past. Had I not acted, I would
have stewed over the incident and replayed it in a hundred "I
should have, I could have, I would have" variations.

A
little while later a newly arrived person asked another
woman, "who's watching the TV?"

"The asshole," she
said, looking my way. The new arrival asked me if I was watching the program.
I answered that I was,
and the matter ended. My rowing time ended, too, as the five
o'clock news burst upon the screen like a ripe, colorful pustule
swollen with the day's accumulation of criminal horrors and
political double-dealings.

The whirlpool and the shower afforded me time to think.
Okay, I had done what I felt was necessary. I had, in a direct,
adult fashion, stated, demanded, not that I get my own way by
being able to watch the program that I wanted, but that I be
accorded the same courtesy as others. That is, instead of
assuming that, because I'm blind, I don't matter when it comes to
TV viewing preferences, asking me if I am watching the program or
if I would mind having the channel changed.

All that may be true, I thought, but won't they just see me
as a cranky blind guy with a chip on my shoulder?

There
are those who will understand and those who will jump at the chance to discount
me. So be it. I'd rather be (as my
detractor put it) an "asshole" with self-respect than a nice guy
who is treated like a nonperson and hates himself (and others)
for it.

Since that minor but significant interaction at the TV,
things have happened. More people are saying hello to me and
remembering my name when they do. People seem more inclined to
chat in the locker room or at an exercise machine. And people do
ask, not always, but more often than before, whether I'm watching
a TV program--not exactly the reaction I would expect toward an
irascible blind guy with a chip on his shoulder and hardly the
way I would expect people to react to an asshole either, for that
matter. Maybe their reactions are born of understanding; maybe
they are born of respect.

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

by Kenneth Jernigan

If one manages simply to plod on from day to day and live
long enough, he or she will inevitably become part of history. I
think I have arrived at that stage. I don't know when I got
there, but I believe I have done it. I keep finding that I
remember events (in fact, participating in events) which my
colleagues tell me are part of the Federation's history.

Take, for instance, the Braille Monitor. It was formerly
known as the All Story Magazine, but it changed its name in 1957.
We had been talking about the change for at least two years--and
then it happened. The first print issue of the Monitor was
published in July of 1957, and the difference between then and
now can be seen both on the contents page and in the specifics of
almost every article.

Since you who are Monitor subscribers are now reading the
November, 1991, issue, I thought you might like to get a little
of the flavor of what we were doing in November of 1957. I have
chosen from that issue two brief articles--one (written by Dr.
Newel Perry) on why state organizations of the blind should join
the Federation, and the other (unsigned) on the upcoming 1958 NFB
convention. Notice the subtle language differences between then
and now, the perception of what blind people of that day were
like, the expectations, the emphasis on social workers and
assistance grants, the narrow focus on dealing with Congress as
opposed to today's broader approach of total involvement, the
talk about the timidity and weakness of the blind, the statement
that "practically every Congressman has already become aware of
our organization," and the absence of many of the things that
have been second nature to our movement for so long that we take
them for granted. I am not saying that Dr. Perry's article tells
it like it isn't but only that it would not be accurate today. We
have (as both he and Dr. tenBroek would fully have hoped and
expected) gone far beyond where we were thirty-four years ago.
This is underscored by the other brief article I am reprinting
from the November, 1957, Monitor--the one on the 1958 NFB
convention. Here, then, is a slice of our history--one that I
lived through and remember vividly:

Why Should A State Organization of the Blind
Be A Member of the National Federation of the Blind?
by Dr. Newel Perry, President-Emeritus
California Council of the Blind

Such a question, when advanced by an American, will surprise
anyone to whom it is addressed. In the twentieth century,
organizing has become second nature to all of us. Daniel Webster
would have replied simply that: "In Union there is strength." Aesop
would have responded by narrating the fable regarding the boy, who after trying
in vain to break a bundle of sticks, was
advised to break each stick individually.

The weak can defend themselves from the strong only by
uniting their individual efforts. This is the universal truth
which all history teaches. Rome, who readily accepted the idea of
organization, came to rule the world, while the Athenians, a much
more gifted people, but who rejected organization, lost their
independence and were overrun and humiliated by Philip of
Macedonia.

The blind are weak, economically. Their number is small. The
demand for their labor is practically nil. Their poverty subjects
them to much humiliation. Though their wants are many, they are
too timid to insist that society should provide them with
remunerative employment. They are inarticulate. Their discomforts
are many, yet they dare not complain. To do so might displease a
Social Worker and result in increased want and additional
embarrassment.

Unlike the blind, other members of society met a similar
situation by resorting to the labor union, using the strike as a
weapon. Why did not the blind resort to the strike? Obviously,
because no demand for the labor of the blind existed. What then
should the blind do? While it is true that the principle of the
strike cannot be made use of by the blind, it is nevertheless
true that a resort to organization can still yield benefits to
them. Organization of the blind will provide them with a means of
propaganda, and it has been frequently demonstrated that a united
effort at propaganda can succeed, and has succeeded in raising
the blind man's standard of living. To propagandize requires
courage, and membership in an organization will provide both
courage and strength.

A conviction almost universally entertained by the blind to
the effect that they are frequently unjustly treated by the
Social Workers is allowed to go unexpressed, due to fear.
Membership in an organization of the blind, for the blind, and by
the blind will help to remove this fear, and frank and bold
criticism would reach the ears of legislators and would help
greatly by enabling your Congressmen and the members of your
legislature to understand your needs. Be assured these men do not
now understand your problem. However, much of your
dissatisfaction--now vented on your social workers--is
misdirected. For example, your bitterness over the fact that your
meager earnings are taken away from you through reductions in
your aid is not to be blamed on your social worker. On the
contrary, the fault rests with your Congressmen. Congress has
forbidden the State authorities to permit you to retain any of
your earnings. To whom, then, shall we address our complaints?
The answer is clear. We must complain to our Congressmen in
Washington. Through what vehicle, then, shall I communicate my
wants and my criticism to the Congressmen in Washington? The
answer is not a state organization of the blind. Remember,
Congress legislates--not for a particular state--but for all the
States. If, therefore, we wish to petition Congress, we must do
so through a national organization. Since, from now on, we must
look to Washington for relief, it follows that we must
communicate with these federal legislators through a nationwide
organization which speaks, not for the blind of a particular
State only--but for the combined blind of the whole country.

We have every reason to be proud of the achievements of the
NFB. Practically every Congressman has already become aware of
our national organization and regards it with respect. We must
not return to our follies of former years. We must not make the
mistake of sending forty-eight separate groups to explain our
needs to Congress. Such a procedure would inevitably result only
in giving Congress the impression that the blind do not know what
they want, and as a natural consequence it would decline to take
any immediate action.

To impress Congress, we must send to Washington our most
able and best trained representatives. Fortunately, under the
energetic administration of our President, we have done just
that. Our campaign in Washington has been intensive and carried
on by men who possess ability, industry, zeal, and understanding
of the present needs of the blind. Let us continue to present a
united front in Washington.

NFB Preliminary Convention Bulletin

... The National Federation of the Blind will hold its 1958
convention in Boston at the Hotel Somerset. The convention will
last four days--July 4, 5, 6, and 7.

Hotel reservations should be made directly with the Hotel
Somerset with a carbon copy to Mr. Nagle. Reservations should be
made as early as possible since we may need more rooms than the
number presently estimated. When you write to the hotel be sure
to say you are requesting the reservation in order to attend the
Convention of the National Federation of the Blind.

The Hotel rates are as follows: One-room unit with one
single bed, $5.00 (all rooms with bath); One-room unit with
double bed, $9.00 (many but not all rooms); One-room unit with
twin beds, $10.50 (are air-conditioned).

There are special group rates: Four people in a one-bedroom
suite (one bedroom and parlor), $4.00 per person; Four people in
a family unit (two connecting bedrooms, 4 beds), $4.00 per
person; Four people in a two-bedroom suite (2 bedrooms, living
room, and bath), $5.00 per person.

All meetings of the convention will be held in the Louis XIV
Ballroom. Beginning Thursday, July 3, the Regency Ballroom will
be set aside as a social room. The registration desk will be in
the West Lobby.
____________________

Yes, our circumstances are certainly different today from
what they were in the fall of 1957. Think what they will be like
thirty-four years from now, in 2025. Also think about the fact
that if you are still around, you will be part of history and
will remember how quaint 1991 will then seem. Finally, consider
that the quaintness or sameness of it all will partly depend on
what you do on a daily basis between now and then.

RECIPES

From the Associate Editor: November is a busy month. Aside
from preparations for the biggest holiday season of the year in
December, November is the calendrical home of Thanksgiving, that
celebration of family, friendship, and gratitude. Many parts of
our Federation family will be gathering on the twenty-eighth to
share a meal and give thanks for victories won, challenges still
ahead, and good friends with whom to share both. Our Board of
Directors will meet in Baltimore at the National Center for the
Blind to chart our course for the coming year but also to savor
the good food and friendship that fill this busy holiday weekend
in the Federation. Whether you will be celebrating Thanksgiving
with individual or Federation family members, enjoy the day and
the blessings we have all experienced this year in the National

Here are some recipes that may inspire you as you plan your
own festivities. There is something here for every course of the
feast and even an idea to help you deal with the left-overs.

Method: Combine all ingredients except turkey in a large
soup pot or Dutch oven and bring to a boil. Wash bird and slip it
gently into the liquid. Cover the pot and simmer for 4-1/2
minutes a pound, turning the bird over half way through cooking
time. Then roast the turkey in an open roaster 6 minutes a pound
at 350 degrees. Baste the bird with liquid from soup pot every 10
minutes. Amounts of ingredients can be adjusted for larger or
smaller birds. This turkey is very moist and flavorful. Handling
it with clean rubber gloves and paper towels makes the job easier
and faster.

SQUASH CASSEROLE
by Betty Capps

Betty Capps is the wife of Don Capps, member of the Board of
Directors of the National Federation of the Blind and President
of the NFB of South Carolina. She is a frequent contributor to
this column.

Method: Mix all ingredients and place in buttered casserole
topped with fresh bread crumbs made from 5 slices bread and 1
stick oleo. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes or until hot and
bubbly. Serves 12 to 15. Can divide and place in two casserole
dishes and freeze one for later use.

Method: Combine pie filling mix, pumpkin, milk, and spices
in a mixing bowl. Mix slowly with electric mixer or by hand until
just blended, about one minute. Fold in whipped topping and spoon
mixture into pie crust. Freeze until firm, at least 4 hours, or
overnight. Let stand at room temperature about 30 minutes before
cutting. Garnish with additional whipped topping if desired.
Makes one 9-inch pie.

RUMMIE BALLS
by Georgia Myers

Georgia Myers is an active member of the Cumberland chapter
of the National Federation of the Blind of Maryland. These rummy
balls are a mainstay of all Maryland fund-raisers and make a
popular appearance at every National Convention. Served around a
cozy fire, they would also provide a fitting conclusion to a
Thanksgiving Day celebration.

Method: Grind coconut, vanilla wafers, and powdered sugar.
Mix all ingredients and roll into nickel-size balls and then roll
in powdered sugar. Makes about 50 balls. Please, do not give to
children!

TURKEY POT PIE
by Lori Duffy

Lori Duffy is the president of the Ohio Parents Division.
She is also studying to become a teacher and hopes to work with
blind children. As a student, she knows the value of budget-
stretching dishes. She invented this ideal use for leftover
turkey.

Method: Mix all filling ingredients in large bowl. Spoon
mixture into 9-inch pie plate lined with pastry. Arrange top
crust on pie. Seal and flute edges. Cut steam vents in center of
top crust. Bake pie at 375 degrees for 50 minutes or until golden
brown.

MONITOR MINIATURES

**Seedlings Catalog Available

We have been asked to print the following:

Seedlings Braille Books for Children's new 1992 catalog will
be available starting November 1, 1991. Twenty exciting new
selections have been added, bringing the total number of books
available in Braille to 144. Prices have not been raised for the
sixth straight year, and the average price is just $8.00 per book
(which is half of what it costs to produce the books).

The types of books offered range from board books for
infants, complete with print, Braille, pictures, and textures, to
the Newbery Award winner, Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry for 10-
to 14-year olds. These books are always in stock--no back orders.
Prompt shipping is a high priority, but please order early to
avoid the holiday rush.

From the Editor: On Thursday night, October 17, 1991, a fire
occurred at the Blazie Engineering complex in Street, Maryland.
The damage was extensive, but when I talked with Deane on October
22, he told me that he was continuing business as usual. He said
that he had already started re-equipping, that he had not lost
any of the paperwork on orders, and that there should not be more
than possibly a two- or three-week delay in getting Braille 'n
Speaks or other products to purchasers. He said that he would
hope for patience and understanding on the part of customers but
that he fully expected no serious delays. For purchase or
information about the Braille 'n Speak, the Braille Blazer, or
other items contact: Blazie Engineering, 3660 Mill Green Road,
Street, Maryland 21154, phone: (301) 879-4944.

**Wild Orchid:

Peggy Pinder, who has been assisting the National Federation
of the Blind of New Mexico to make arrangements for this fund-raising project, asked us to print the following:

A company of aspiring actors, all living in New Mexico, has
recently entered into an agreement with the National Federation
of the Blind of New Mexico. The actors use their talents to
provide audio productions (with full cast and sound effects) of
mystery romances set in the exotic Southwest. The name of their
production company is Wild Orchid Productions, which reflects
their own amused enjoyment of their work. The first romance,
Moondagger of Desire, is set in a New Mexico archeological dig.
Others involve sabotage at the White Sands missile range and an
international balloon race. All Wild Orchid offerings are of the
romantic genre. Six titles are now available. The NFB of New
Mexico receives one quarter of the basic price of every taped
book bought by calling (800) 347-2160. Each tape costs $8.95 plus
$2.00 shipping--a good price for this dramatization of a very
popular type of casual reading. If you enjoy romances, please
call to place your order today. If you know someone else who
does, order now for a delightful Christmas gift. Romance readers,
the NFB of New Mexico, and the aspiring actors all benefit.

**In Memoriam:

From the Editor: It is with great sadness that I report the
death of Shirley Trexler at 6:30 Tuesday evening, October 15,
1991, at Mercy Hospital in Baltimore. Eileen Rivera, president of
the Baltimore Chapter, called to tell me the news, and it came as
a complete shock. Shirley had been in the hospital for less than
twenty-four hours, and her death was totally unexpected. She had
diabetic complications, and at the end there was a cardiac
arrest.

I first met Shirley over twenty years ago when she lived in
Philadelphia and was one of the leaders of the movement in
Pennsylvania. She was never neutral, and she always spoke her
mind. Mixed with the sweetness of her personality was enough
pepper to make her stimulating and interesting. She was always in
the thick of Federation activities--marching on the picket lines,
helping write NFB songs, serving as an officer at the state or
local level, and regularly doing her part in whatever way she was
needed. She received comparatively little recognition and was
content to have it that way. Recently she had lived in Baltimore
and had held office and been active in the local chapter. Also in
recent years Shirley had sold and promoted products for the blind
through her work with the company Aids Unlimited.

She and her husband Arthur Segal made their home a constant
headquarters and gathering place for Federation activities.
Arthur and Shirley were a team, serving as a focus of strength
and unity at all levels of the movement. They worked together to
build the Federation in every way that they could on a daily
basis. Shirley is now gone, and she will be mourned throughout
the movement. We join with Arthur in his grief and his memory of
one of the best and most loyal people we have ever known.

**Needed:

We recently received the following letter:

I am a deaconess working with persons with multiple
disabilities. I would like to obtain a Perkins Brailler to make
individualized materials for some of my students who are
deaf/blind and beginning to read Braille but not able to handle
regular Braille materials. I would like to find a used Brailler
in working condition since new ones are very expensive. The Board
for Missions of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod suggested that
you might know of such a Brailler or be able to help me find one.
I would appreciate any information or help you might give me.
Contact Linda Schaefer at Box 428, Atlanta, Illinois 61723.

**Sell:

We have been asked to print the following:

I have an electronic typewriter for sale, which is four
years old and in excellent condition. Extra ribbons, correction
tape, and a print wheel are included. Cost is $200. Please
contact Cynthia Handel at 25 Pleasantview Ave., Willow Street,
Pennsylvania 17584-9302, or call (717) 464-2110.

**New Computer Game Available:

We have been asked to print the following:

Run for President is a new computer game for IBM and IBM-
compatible computers. It presents you with the challenge of
running against the computer for the U.S. Presidency. You face
the ups and downs of a political campaign. There are sound
effects, and the game is fully usable with speech output. For a
copy send a check in the sum of $20 to Richard DeSteno, 20
Meadowbrook Road, Short Hills, New Jersey 09078; or call (201)
379-7471 for more information. The game will be sent on a five
and a quarter inch diskette unless a three and a half inch one is
requested.

**Blind Ski Champion:

We recently received the following news release:

World Disabled Water Skiing Tournament--The 1991 World
Disabled Trophy Water Ski Tournament was held in Michigan, where
12 countries represented by 80 participants competed. The USA
team came in second to Great Britain. In addition to male/female
divisions, there were categories for paraplegics (sit skiers),
amputees (with and without prosthetics), and blind (total and
partial) skiers.

Dr. Dennis Wyant, director of vocational rehabilitation for
the Department of Veterans Affairs and the national secretary for
the Blinded American Veterans Foundation, won four gold medals
and set three world tournament best scores. His wins were in the
slalom, tricks, and jump competitions. The fourth gold medal was
for his performance as Best All-Around Male participant.

The world games are held every two years. The 1989 games
were in Perth, Australia, where Wyant won one Gold and three
Silver medals.

According to Wyant, "Water skiing
is a great sport for disabled athletes. In the case of a blind skier, you
just have to
hold on to the rope and follow the boat."

Next year the U.S. National Championships will again take
place in Michigan. An 18-member team will be selected to
represent the United States in the 1993 World Games, tentatively
scheduled for the French Riviera.

**Course on the Catholic Faith Available:

We have been asked to print the following:

Catholic Inquiry for the Blind is a non-profit volunteer
group, which is making a course of ten tapes (each tape costs
fifty cents) and a free catalog available to anyone who would
like to know more about the Catholic faith. For more information
contact Catholic Inquiry for the Blind, 228 N. Walnut Street,
Lansing, Michigan 48933, or call (517) 342-2500.

**Sell:

Larry Downs of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, has asked us to
print the following:

I have for sale a seven-volume Braille set of the Americana
Vest Pocket Dictionary and a Braille set of the Good News for
Modern Man Bible. This contains six volumes, including the New
Testament and the book of Psalms. Anyone interested in purchasing
these items may contact Debbie at (717) 737-2380.

**Two Cookbooks Available:

We have been asked to print the following:

The Massachusetts Association for the Blind is offering two
new Braille cookbooks. A Little New England Cookbook, in one
volume ($10.00) is a delicious collection of classic recipes such
as Boston brown bread, lobster rolls, and pumpkin pie. A Taste of
Cherries, in one volume ($5.00), is full of cherry recipes for
muffins, cakes, pies, tarts, and cobblers. Great for gifts! Call
or write for a complete cookbook listing, including our popular
365 Microwave Recipes. If interested in ordering, contact MAB
Braille Dept., 200 Ivy Street, Brookline, Massachusetts 02146, or
call (617) 738-5110, TTY (617) 731-6444.

**New Ham Radio Directory:

Patrick Gormley of Greenbelt, Maryland, has asked
us to print the following:

The NFB Amateur Radio Group, Curtis Willoughby President,
met this past summer at our National Convention in New Orleans.
During this meeting we decided to gather information for
publication of a ham directory, scheduled for January, 1992.
Federationist Phil Oliver is coordinating this project. His
address is 109 Nelson Street, Leominster, Massachusetts 01453,
and his telephone number is (508) 537-3099. He can be reached in
Braille, print, tape, phone (no collect calls please), and
electronic mail. He is systems operator of the Massachusetts
Commission for the Blind computerized bulletin board.

**New Chapter:

Sharon Gold, President of the National Federation of the
Blind of California, has announced that on August 30, 1991, the
parents support group that Shirley Baillif has worked hard to
bring into being (see the May, 1991, issue of the Braille
Monitor) officially became the North San Diego County Parents of
Blind Children Support Group of the NFB of California's Parents
of Blind Children Chapter. It is a committed and energetic group
of parents who meet monthly. The newly elected officers are
President, Shirley Baillif; Vice President, Maria Martinez;
Secretary, Esther Kats; and Treasurer, Sharon Davis.

Congratulations to the parents and to the NFB of California.

**Sell:

Mildred Rivera of California has asked us to print the
following information:

Fordham University School of Law is offering a three-year
scholarship for blind students. It will cover two-thirds of the
student's tuition, provided that he or she maintains a grade
point average of 2.3. The Law School's library is provided with a
Kurzweil Reading Machine, IBM PC with Talking Westlaw Computer
Base, and a Braille printer. We would like to publicize this
scholarship as extensively as possible. For further information
please contact Amy Reiss at (212) 535-4764 or by writing to her
at Morrison, Cohen, Singer, & Weinstein, 750 Lexington Avenue,
New York, New York 10022.

**In Memoriam:

From the Editor: I am sorry to report the death on September
15, 1991, of Theresa (Terry) Herron after a short illness. Terry
served for six years as the president of the National Federation
of the Blind of New Hampshire and for four years in the early
eighties as a member of the Board of Directors of the National
Federation of the Blind. Recently she and her husband Bob had
been living in Florida. I worked closely with Terry when she was
president of the NFB of New Hampshire and was always impressed by
her dedication and firmness of purpose in working for the good of
the organization. She knew how to be restrained and diplomatic,
but she also knew how to lecture a group with the sternness of a
traditional New England school teacher. She was a no-nonsense
state president, and you never had any doubt about what she
thought or what she meant. As president in New Hampshire she was
always busy with Federation work--testifying before legislative
committees, recruiting members, raising funds, and planning for
the months and the years ahead. Her health was precarious, but
her spirit was indomitable.

On the National Board she was reliable and constant, not
voluble but steady of purpose. If she approved of what was
happening, she often left the talking to others; but if she
disapproved, you knew it.

My last real talk with Terry occurred in the fall of 1989
when I attended the Florida convention in Miami. She is now gone,
and our movement is poorer for her absence. When Bob called to
tell me of her death, his words were few, but his grief could be
felt. We share with him that grief and express our sorrow at
Terry's passing.

**Reader's Digest:

Tuck Tinsley, President of the American Printing House for
the Blind, has asked us to carry the following announcement:

There is good news about Reader's Digest on flexible discs!
Effective with the January, 1992, issue, flexible discs will be
mailed directly to homes of readers from the American Printing
House for the Blind. Readers interested in receiving this service
should contact their regional libraries or send postcards
indicating interest to: APH Magazine Department, Post Office Box
6389, Louisville, Kentucky 40206. Due to limited staffing, APH is
unable to accept phone orders regarding this subscription. The
Braille edition of Reader's Digest will continue to be mailed
directly to the homes of readers as it has in the past, free of
charge, and the cassette edition will continue to be available by
subscription for $16.80 for one year or $8.40 for six months.

**TV Magnifying Screens Available:

We have been asked to carry the following
announcement:

My name is Jim Ursaki of URSA Marketing Group. I distribute
TV Magnifying Screens which help visually impaired people watch
TV with an enlarged screen.The Screen comes in 3 sizes: CTT-36A--For 20" to 28" TV sets. Enlarges picture to 36". Comes complete
with sturdy stand and castors. Retail Price: $120.00 U.S. CTT-
30A--For 19" to 26" TV sets. Enlarges picture to 30". Television
set sits on arms with screen in front. Retail Price: $70.00 U.S.
CTT-25A--For 13" to 19" TV sets. Enlarges picture to 25".
Television set sits on arms with screen in front. Retail Price:
$56.00 U.S.

Ann Morris Enterprises, Inc., announces the availability of
a talking thermometer which reads both medical and weather
temperatures. Other products in volume 6 include a beeper
locator, talking watch with a lithium battery, Braille calendar
book, talking book player with radio, and much more. The large
print and cassette editions of the catalogue are free. Send a
formatted disk for an IBM copy or $8.00 for Braille. Address all
correspondence to Ann Morris Enterprises, Inc., 26 Horseshoe
Lane, Levittown, New York 11756, or telephone (516) 796-4938.

**Good Advice:

We received the following brief meditation from Colleen
Roth, Vice President of the Toledo Federation of the Blind and
Chair of the Committee on the Blind Multiply Handicapped Child of
the Parents of Blind Children Division:

WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT HUGS?

There's no such thing as a bad hug--only good ones and great
ones. They're not fattening, and they don't cause cancer or
cavities. They're all natural--with no preservatives, artificial
ingredients, or pesticide residue. They're cholesterol free,
naturally sweet, 100 percent wholesome. And they're a completely
renewable natural resource.